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ii 1 1 1 n 1 1 1 n ii 1 1 1 n n i ii n i n hi ^ vy ww 


> l< •• III HM« 1 1 • L> Mill 


lie felt a hand passed carelessly through his arm. — Page 31. 




A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE 


BT 


WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. 


. HO 


ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM L. SHEPPARD. 



BOSTON: 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 
S'! jc BitoerstUe Prrcc, Cambiitfff. 

1886. 


?Z3 
,Hs 4- 

3 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 
James R. Osgood and Company, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at 'Washington. 


E/.ch 

of Supreme Council 

Aug 10,1940 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 


H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 


CONTENTS, 


Page 

I. Up the Saguenay 13 

II. Mrs. Ellison’s Little Manceuvre .... 46 

III. On the Way back to Quebec 73 

IV. Mr. Arbuton’s Inspiration 90 

V. Mr. Arbuton makeo himself agreeable . . . 104 

VI. A Letter of Kitty’s 

VII. Love’s Young Dream . • .... 141 

VIII. Next Morning 160 

IX. Mr. Arbuton’s Infatuation 180 

X. Mr. Arbutcn speaks I 03 

XI. Kitty answers 202 

XII. The Picnic at Chateau-Bigot . • • • • • 21 6 

XIII. Ordeal 238 

XIV. Afterwards 260 







FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. 

■ ■ » -- 

He felt a hand passed carelessly through 

HIS ARM 

And fainted in his arms .... 
The garden of the Ursuline Convent . 

Her person swayed from side to side 
w No, I won’t, Fanny,” answered the young 

6IKL •••••••• 

“ Miss Ellison, I *\& blundered in your 

NAME 


PASS 

32 

60 

96 

118 

155 

228 


She stood and watched him walk away 


263 







s 




A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


* 





A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 



On the forward promenade of 
the Saguenay* boat which had 
been advertised to le^ve Quebec 
at seven o’clock on Tuesday morn- 
ing, Miss Kitty Ellison sat tran- 
quilly expectant of the joy? which 
its departure should bring, ami 
tolerantly patient of its delay ; for if all the Saguenay 
had not been in promise, she would have thought it the 


14 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


greatest happiness just to have that prospect of the 
St. Lawrence and Quebec. The sun shone with a 
warm yellow light on the Upper Town, with its gir- 
dle of gray wall, and on the red flag that drowsed 
above the citadel, and was a friendly lustre on the 
tinned roofs of the Lower Town ; while away off to 
the south and east and west wandered the purple 
hills and the farmlit plains in such dewy shadow 
and effulgence as would have been enough to make 
the heaviest heart glad. Near at hand the river was 
busy with every kind of craft, and in the distance 
was mysterious with silvery vapors ; little breaths 
of haze, like an ethereal colorless flame, exhaled 
from its surface, and it all glowed with a lovely 
inner radiance. In the middle distance a black ship 
was heaving anchor and setting sail, and the voice 
of the seamen came soft and sad and yet wildly 
hopeful to the dreamy ear of the young girl, whose 
soul at once went round the world before the ship, 
and then made haste back again to the promenade 
of the Saguenay boat. She sat leaning forward a 
little with her hands fallen into her lap, letting her 
unmastered thoughts play as they would in memo- 
ries and hopes around the consciousness that she 
was the happiest girl in the world, and blest beyond 
desire or desert. To have left home as she had 
done, equipped for a single day at Niagara, and 
then to have come adventurously on, by grace of her 
cousin’s wardrobe, as it were, to Montreal and Que- 
bec ; to be now going up the Saguenay, and finally 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 


15 


to be destined to return home by way of Boston and 
New York; this was more than any one human 
being had a right to ; and, as she had written home 
to the girls, she felt that her privileges ought to be 
divided up among all the people of Eriecreek. She 
was very grateful to Colonel Ellison and Fanny for 
affording her these advantages ; but they being now 
out of sight in pursuit of state-rooms, she was not 
thinking of them in relation to her pleasure in the 
morning scene, but was rather regretting the ab- 
sence of a lady with whom they had travelled from 
Niagara, and to whom she imagined she would that 
moment like to say something in praise of the pros- 
pect. This lady was a Mrs. Basil March of Bos- 
ton; and though it was her wedding journefy and 
her husband’s presence ought to have absorbed her, 
she and Miss Kitty had sworn a sisterhood, and 
were pledged to see each other before long at Mrs. 
March’s home in Boston. In her absence, now, 
Kitty thought what a very charming person she 
was, and wondered if all Boston people were really 
like her, so easy and friendly and hearty. In her 
letter she had told the girls to tell her Uncle Jack 
that he had not rated Boston people a bit too high, 
if she were to judge from Mr. and Mrs. March, and 
that she was sure they would help her as far as 
they could to carry out his instructions when she got 
to Boston. 

These instructions were such as might seem pre- 
posterous if no more particular statement in regard 


16 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


to lier Uncle Jack were made, but will be imagin' . 
able enough, I hope, when he is a little described. 
The Ellisons were a West Virginia family who had 
wandered up into. a corner of Northwestern New 
York, because Dr. Ellison (unceremoniously known 
to Kitty as Uncle Jack) was too much an abolitionist 
to live in a slaveholding State with safety to him- 
self or comfort to his neighbors. Here his family of 
three boys and two girls had grown up, and hither 
in time had come Kitty, the only child of his young- 
est brother, who had gone first to Illinois and thence, 
from the pretty constant adversity of a country 
editor, to Kansas, where he joined the Free State 
party and fell in one of the border feuds. Her 
mother had died soon after, and Dr. Ellison’s heart 
bowed itself tenderly over the orphan. She was 
something not only dear, but sacred to him as the 
child of a martyr to the highest cause on earth ; and 
the love of the whole family encompassed her. One 
of the boys had brought her from Kansas when she 
was yet very little, and she had grown up among 
them as their youngest sister ; but the doctor, from 
a tender scruple against seeming to usurp the place 
of his brother in her childish thought, would not let 
her call him father, and in obedience to the rule 
which she soon began to give their love, they all 
turned and called him Uncle Jack with her. Yet 
the Ellisons, though they loved their little cousin, 
did not spoil her, — neither the doctor, nor his great 
grown-up sons whom she knew as the boys, nor his 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 


17 


daughters whom she called the girls, though they 
were well-nigh women when she came to them. 
She was her uncle’s pet and most intimate friend, 
riding with him on his professional visits till she be- 
came as familiar a feature of his equipage as the 
doctor’s horse itself ; and he educated her in those 
extreme ideas, tempered by humor, which formed 
the character of himself and his family. They loved 
Kitty, and played with her, and laughed at her when 
she needed ridiculing ; they made a jest of their 
father on the one subject on which he never jested, 
and even the anti-slavery cause had its droll points 
turned to the light. They had seen danger and 
trouble enough at different times in its service, but 
no enemy ever got more amusement out of it. 
Their house was a principal entrepdt of the under- 
ground railroad, and they were always helping anx- 
ious travellers over the line ; but the boys seldom 
came back from an excursion to Canada without ad- 
ventures to keep the family laughing for a week ; 
and they made it a serious business to study the 
comic points of their beneficiaries, who severally lived 
in the family records by some grotesque mental or 
physical trait. They had an irreverent name among 
themselves for each of the humorless abolition lec- 
turers who unfailingly abode with them on their 
rounds ; and these brethren and sisters, as they 
called them, paid with whatever was laughable in 
them for the substantial favors they received. 

Miss Kitty, having the same natural bent, began 
2 


18 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


even as a child to share in these harmless reprisals, 
and to look at life with the same wholesomely fan- 
tastic vision. But she remembered one abolition 
visitor of whom none of them made fun, but treated 
with a serious distinction and regard, — an old 
man with a high, narrow forehead, and thereon a 
thick upright growth of gray hair ; who looked at 
her from under bushy brows with eyes as of blue 
flame, and took her on his knee one night and 
sang to her “ Blow ye the trumpet, blow ! ” He 
and her uncle had been talking of some indefinite, 
far-off place that they called Boston, in terms that 
commended it to her childish apprehension as very 
little less holy than Jerusalem, and as the home 
of all the good and great people outside of Pales- 
tine. 

In fact, Boston had always been Dr. Ellison’s 
foible. In the beginning of the great anti-slavery 
agitation, he had exchanged letters (corresponded, 
he used to say) with John Quincy Adams on the 
subject of Lovejoy’s murder; and he had met 
several Boston men at the Free Soil Convention in 
Buffalo in 1848. “ A little formal perhaps, a little 

reserved,” he would say, “ but excellent men ; 
polished, and certainly of sterling principle : ” 
which would make his boys and girls laugh, as 
they grew older, and sometimes provoke them to 
highly colored dramatizations of the formality of 
these Bostonians in meeting their father. The 
years passed and the boys went West, and when 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 


19 


the war came, they took service in Iowa and 
Wisconsin regiments. By and by the President’s 
Proclamation of freedom to the slaves reached 
E.'iecivek while Dick and Bob happened both io 
be home on leave. After they had allowed their 
sire his rapture, “ Well, this is a great blow for 
father,” said Bob ; “ what are you going to do now, 
father? Fugitive slavery and all its charms blot- 
ted out forever, at one fell swoop. Pretty rough 
on you, isn’t it ? No more men and brothers, no 
more soulless oligarchy. Dull lookout, father.” 

“ Oh no,” insinuated one of the girls, “ there’s 
Boston.” 

“ Why, yes,” cried Dick, “ to be sure there is. 
The President hasn’t abolished Boston. Live for 
Boston.” 

And the doctor did live for an ideal Boston, 
thereafter, so far at least as concerned a never- 
relinquished, never-fulfilled purpose of some day 
making a journey to Boston. But in the mean 
time there were other things ; and at present, since 
the Proclamation had given him a country worth 
living in, he was ready to honor her by studying her 
antiquities. In his youth, before his mind had been 
turned so strenuously to the consideration of slav- 
ery, he had a pretty taste for the mystery of the 
Mound Builders, and each of his boys now returned 
to camp with instructions to note any phenomena 
that would throw light upon this interesting sub- 
ject. Ttev would have abundant leisure for re- 


20 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


search, since the Proclamation, Dr. Ellison insisted, 
practically ended the war. 

The Mound Builders were only a starting-point 
for the doctor. He advanced from them to his- 
torical times in due course, and it happened that 
when Colonel Ellison and his wife stopped off at 
Eriecreek on their way East, in 1870, they found 
him deep in the history of the Old French War. 
As yet the colonel had not intended to take the 
Canadian route eastward, and he escaped without 
the charges which he must otherwise have received 
to look up the points of interest at Montreal and 
Quebec connected with that ancient struggle. He 
and his wife carried Kitty with them to see Niag- 
ara (which she had never seen because it was so 
near) ; but no sooner had Dr. Ellison got the 
dispatch announcing that they would take Kitty 
on with them down the St. Lawrence to Quebec, 
and bring her home by way of Boston, than he sat 
down and wrote her a letter of the most compre- 
hensive character. As far as concerned Canada 
his mind was purely historical ; but when it came 
to Boston it was strangely re-abolitionized, and 
amidst an ardor for the antiquities of the place, his 
old love for its humanitarian preeminence blazed 
up. lie would have her visit Faneuil Hall because 
of its Revolutionary memories, but not less because 
Wendell Phillips had there made his first anti- 
slavery speech. She was to see the collections of 
the Massachusetts Historical Society, and if pos 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 


21 


8il'le certain points of ancient colonial interest 
which he named ; but at any rate she was some- 
how to catch sight of the author of the “ Biglow 
Papers,” of Senator Sumner, of Mr. Whittier, of 
Dr. Ilowe, of Colonel Higginson, and of Mr.' 
Garrison. These people were all Bostonians to 
the idealizing remoteness of Dr. Ellison, and he 
could not well conceive of them asunder. He per- 
haps imagined that Kitty was more likely to see 
them together than separately ; and perhaps in- 
deed they were less actual persons, to his admira- 
tion, than so many figures of a grand historical 
composition. Finally, 44 I want you to remember, 
my dear child,” he wrote, 44 that in Boston you are 
not only in the birthplace of American liberty, 
but the yet holier scene of its resurrection. There 
everything that is noble and grand and liberal and 
enlightened in the national life has originated, and 
I cannot doubt that you will find the character of 
its people marked by every attribute of a magnani- 
mous democracy. If I could envy you anything, 
my dear girl, I should envy you this privilege of 
seeing a city where man is valued simply and 
snlely for what he is in himself, and where color, 
wealth, family, occupation, and other vulgar and 
meretricious distinctions are wholly lost sight of 
in the consideration of individual excellence.” 

Kitty got her uncle’s letter the night before 
starting up the Saguenay, and quite too late foi 
compliance with his directions concerning Quebec ; 


22 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


but she resolved that as to Boston his wishes should 
be fulfilled to the utmost limit of possibility. She 
knew that nice Mr. March must be acquainted with 
some of those very people. Kitty had her uncle's 
letter in her pocket, and she was just going to 
take it out and read it again, when something else 
attracted her notice. 

The boat had been advertised to leave at seven 
o’clock, and it was now half past. A party of 
English people were pacing somewhat impatiently 
up and down before Kitty, for it had been made 
known among the passengers (by that subtle pro- 
cess through which matters of public interest trans- 
pire in such places) that breakfast would not be 
served till the boat started, and these English peo- 
ple had the appetites which go before the admirable 
digestions of their nation. But they had also the 
good temper which does not so certainly accompany 
the insular good appetite. The man in his dashing 
Glengarry cap and liis somewhat shabby gray suit 
took on one arm the plain, jolly woman who seemed 
to be his wife, and on the other, the amiable, hand- 
some young girl who looked enough like him to be 
his sister, and strode rapidly back and forth, saying 
that they must get up an appetite for breakfast. 
This made the women laugh, and so he said it 
again, which made them laugh so much that the 
elder lost her balance, and in regaining it twisted 
off her high shoe heel, which she briskly tossed 
into the river. But she sat down after that, and 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 


23 


the three were presently intent upon the Li verpool 
steamer which was just arrived and was now gliding 
up to her dock, with her population of passengers 
thronging her quarter-deck. 

“ She’s from England ! ” said the husband, ex 
pressively. 

“ Only fancy ! ” answered the wife. “ Give me 
the glass, Jenny.” Then, after a long survey of 
the steamer, she added, “ Fancy her being from 
England ! ” They all looked and said nothing 
for two or three minutes, when the wife’s mind 
turned to the delay of their own boat and of break- 
fast. “ This thing,” she said, with that air of utter- 
ing a novelty which the English cast about their 
commonplaces, — “ this thing doesn’t start at seven, 
you know.” 

“No,” replied the younger woman, “she waits 
for the Montreal boat.” 

“ Fancy her being from England ! ” said the 
other, whose eyes and thoughts had both wandered 
back to the Liverpool steamer. 

“ There’s the Montreal boat now, cornin’ round 
the point,” cried the husband. “ Don’t you see the 
steam ? ” He pointed with his glass, and then 
studied the white cloud in the distance. “No, by 
Jove ! it’s a saw-mill on the shore.” 

“ Oh, Harry ! ” sighed both the women, reproach- 
fully. 

“ Why, deuce take it, you know,” he retorted, 
“ I didn’t turn it into a saw-mill. It’s been a saw- 
mill all aldig, I fancy.” 


24 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


Half an hour later, wh^n the Montreal boat came 
in sight, the women would have her a saw-mill till 
she stood in full view in mid-channel. Their own 
vessel paddled out into the stream as she drew near, 
and the two bumped and rubbed together till a 
gangway plank could be passed from one to the 
other. A very well dressed young man stood ready 
to get upon the Saguenay boat, with a porter beside 
him bearing his substantial valise. No one else ap- 
parently was coming aboard. 

The English people looked upon him for an in- 
fant with wrathful eyes, as they hung over the rail 
of the promenade. “ Upon my word,” said the 
elder of the women, “ have we been waitin’ all this 
time for one man ? ” 

“ Hush, Edith,” answered the younger, “it’s an 
Englishman.^ And they all three mutely recog- 
nized the right of an Englishman to stop, not only 
the boat, but the whole solar system, if his ticket 
entitled him to a passage on any particular planet, 
while Mr. Miles Arbuton of Boston, Massachusetts, 
passed at his ease from one vessel to the other. He 
had often been mistaken for an Englishman, and the 
error of those spectators, if he had known it, would 
not have surprised him. Perhaps it might have 
softened his judgment of them as he sat facing them 
at breakfast ; but he did not know it, and he 
thought them three very common English people 
with something professional, as of public singing or 
acting, about them. The young girl wore, instead 


LT THE SAGUENAY. 


25 


of a travelling-suit, a vivid light blue dress and 
over her sky-blue eyes and fresh cheeks a glory of 
corn-colored hair lay in great braids and masses. It 
was magnificent, but it wanted distance ; so near, it 
was almost harsh. Mr. Arbuton’s eyes fell from 
the face to the vivid blue dress, which was not quite 
fresh and not quite new, and a glimmer of ’cold dis- 
missal came into them, as he gave himself entiiely 
to the slender merits of the steamboat breakfast. 

He was himself, meantime, an object of interest 
to a young lady who sat next to the English party, 
and who glanced at him from time to time, out of 
tender gray eyes, with a furtive play of feeling upon 
a sensitive face. To her he was that divine possi- 
bility which ever}^ young man is to every young 
maiden ; and, besides, he was invested with a halo 
of romance as the gentleman with the blond mus- 
tache, whom she had seen at Niagara the week be- 
fore, on the Goat Island Bridge. To the pretty 
matron at her side, he was exceedingly handsome, 
as a young man may frankly be to a young matron, 
but not otherwise comparable to her husband, the 
full-personed, good-humored looking gentleman who 
had j ust added sausage to the ham and eggs on .his 
plate. He was handsome, too, but his full beard 
was reddish, whereas Mr. Arbuton’s mustache was 
Gaxen ; and his dress was not worn with that scru- 
pulosity with which the Bostonian bore his clothes ; 
there was a touch of slovenliness in him that 
scarcely consorted with the alert, ex-military air of 


26 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


Borne of his movements. u Good-looking young 
John Bull,” lie thought concerning Mr. Arbuton, 
and then thought no more about him, being no more 
self-judged before the supposed Englishman than he 
would have been before so much Frenchman or 
Spaniard. Mr. Arbuton, on the other hand, if he 
had met an Englishman so well dressed as himself, 
must at once have arraigned himself, and had him- 
self tacitly tried for his personal and national differ- 
ence. He looked in his turn at these people, and 
thought he should have nothing to do with them, in 
spite of the long-lashed gray eyes. 

It was not that they had made the faintest ad- 
vance towards acquaintance, or that the choice of 
knowing them or not was with Mr. Arbuton ; but 
he had the habit of thus protecting himself from the 
chances of life, and a conscience against encouraging 
people whom he might have to drop for reasons of 
society. This was sometimes a sacrifice, for he was 
not past the age when people take a lively interest 
in most other human beings. When breakfast was 
over, and he had made the tour of the boat, and 
seen all his fellow-passengers, he perceived that he 
could have little in common with any of them, and 
that piobably the journey would require the full 
exercise of that tolerant spirit in which he had un- 
dertaken a branch of summer travel in his native 
land. 

The rush of air against the steairer was very raw 
and chill, and the forward promenade was left 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 


27 


almost entirely to the English professional people, 
who walked rapidly up and down, with jok3S and 
laughter of their kind, while the wind blew the girl’s 
hair in loose gold about her fresh face, and twisted 
her blue drapery tight about her comely shape 
When they got out of breath they sat down beside 
a large American lady, with a great deal of gold 
filling in her front teeth, and presently rose again 
and ran races to and from the bow. Mr. Arbuton 
turned away in displeasure. At the stern he found 
a much larger company, most of whom had fur- 
nished themselves with novels and magazines from 
the stock on board, and were drowsing over them. 
One gentleman was reading aloud to three ladies 
the newspaper account of a dreadful shipwreck ; 
other ladies and gentlemen were coming and going 
forever from their state-rooms, as the wont of some 
is ; others yet sat with closed eyes, as if having 
come to see the Saguenay they were resolved to see 
nothing of the St. Lawrence on the way thither, 
but would keep their vision sacred to the wonders 
cf the former river. 

Yet the St. Lawrence was worthy to be seen, as 
3 ven Mr. Arbuton owned, whose way was to slight 
American scenery, in distinction from his country- 
men who boast it the finest in the world. As you 
leave Quebec, with its mural-crowned and castled 
rock, and drop down the stately river, presently 
the snowy fall of Montmorenci, far back in its 
purple hollow, leaps perpetual avalanche into the 


28 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 



abyss, and then you are abreast of the beautiful 
Isle of Orleans, whose low shores, with their ex- 
panses of farmland, and their groves of pine and 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 


29 


oak, are still as lovely as when the wild grape 
festooned the primitive forests and won from the 
easy rapture of old Cartier the name of Isle of Bac- 
chus. For two hours farther down the river either 
shore is bright and populous with the continuous 
villages of the habitans , each clustering about its 
slim-spired church, in its shallow vale by the water’s 
edge, or lifted in more eminent picturesqueness 
upon some gentle height. The banks, nowhere 
lofty or abrupt, are such as in a southern land some 
majestic river might How between, wide, slumbrous, 
open to all the heaven and the long day till the 
very set of sun. But no starry palm glasses it3 
crest in the clear cold green from these low brinks ; 
the pale birch, slender and delicately fair, mirrors 
here the wintry whiteness of its boughs ; and this 
is the sad great river of the awful North. 

Gradually, as the day wore on, the hills which 
had shrunk almost out of sight on one hand, and 
on the other were dark purple in the distance, 
drew near the shore, and at one point on the north- 
ern side rose almost from the water’s edge. The 
river expanded into a lake before them, and in their 
lap some cottages, and half-way up the hillside, 
among the stunted pines, a much-galleried hotel 
proclaimed a resort of fashion in the heart of what 
seemed otherwise a wilderness. Indian huts sheathed 
in birch-bark nestled at the foot of the rocks, which 
were rich in orange and scarlet stains ; out of the 
tops of the huts curled the blue smoke, and at the 


80 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 

door of one stood a squaw in a flame-red petticoat 
others in bright shawls squatted about on the rocks, 
each with a circle of dogs and papooses. But all 
this warmth of color only served, like a winter sun- 
set, to heighten the chilly and desolate sentiment 
of the scene. The light dresses of the ladies on the 
veranda struck cold upon the eye ; in the faces of 
(lie sojourners who lounged idly to the steamer’s 
landing-place, the passenger could fancy a sad 
resolution to repress their tears when the boat 
should go away and leave them. She put off two 
or three old peasant-women who were greeted by 
other such on the pier, as if returned from a long 
journey ; and then the crew discharged the vessel 
of a prodigious freight of onions which formed 
the sole luggage these old women had brought from 
Quebec. Bale after bale of the pungent bulbs 
was borne ashore in the careful arms of the deck- 
hands, and counted by the owners ; at last order 
was given to draw in the plank, when a passionate 
cry burst from one of the old women, who extended 
both hands with an imploring gesture towards the 
boat. A bale of onions had been left aboard ; a 
deck-hand seized it and ran quickly ashore with it, 
and then back again, followed by the benedictions 
Ol the tranquilized and comforted beldam. The 
gay sojourners at Murray Bay controlled their 
grief, and as Mr. Arbuton turned from them, the 
boat, pushing out, left them to their fashionable 
desolation. She struck across to the southern shore, 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 


31 


to land passengers for Cacouna, a watering-place 
greater than Murray Bay. The tide, which rises 
fifteen feet at Quebec, is the impulse, not the savor 
of the sea ; but at Cacouna the water is salt, and 
the sea-bathing lacks nothing but the surf ; and 
hither resort in great numbers the Canadians who 
fly their cities during the fierce, brief fever of the 
northern summer. The watering-place village and 
hotel is not in sight from the landing, but, as at 
Murray Bay, the sojourners thronged the pier, as 
if the arrival of the steamboat were the great 
event of their day. That afternoon they were in 
unusual force, having come on foot and by omnibus 
and calash ; and presently there passed down through 
their ranks a strange procession with a band of mu- 
sic leading the way to the steamer. 

“ It’s an Indian wedding,” Mr. Arbuton heard 
one of the boat’s oificers saying to the gentleman 
with the ex-military air, who stood next him beside 
the rail ; and now, the band having drawn aside, 
he saw the bride and groom, — the latter a com- 
mon, stolid-faced savage, and the former pretty and 
almost white, with a certain modesty and sweetness 
of mien. Before them went a young American, 
with a jaunty Scotch cap and a visage of supernat- 
ural gravity, as the master of ceremonies which 
he had probably planned; arm in arm with him 
walked a portly chieftain m black broadcloth, pre- 
posterously adorned on the breast with broad flat 
disks of eilver in two rows. Behind the bridal 


32 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


couple came the whole village in pairs, men and 
women, and children of all ages, even to brown 
babies in arms, gay in dress and indescribably seri- 
ous in demeanor. They were mated in some sort 
according to years and size ; and the last couple 
were young fellows paired in an equal tipsiness. 
These reeled and wavered along the pier ; and when 
the other wedding guests 
crowned the day’s festiv- 
ity by going aboard the 
steamer, they followed 
dizzily down the gang- 
way. M i d w a y they 
lurched heavily ; the 
spectators gave a cry ; 
but they had happily 
lurched in opposite direc- 
tions ; their grip upon 
each other’s arms held, 
and a forward stagger 
launched them victori- 
ously aboard in a heap. They had scarcely dis- 
appeared from sight, when, having as it were in- 
stantly satisfied their curiosity concerning the boat, 
the other guests began to go ashore in due order. 
Mr. Arbuton waited in a slight anxiety to see 
whether the tipsy couple could repeat their ma- 
noeuvre successfully on an upward incline ; and 
they had just appeared on the gangway, when he 
felt a hand passed carelessly and as if unconsciously 



UP THE SAGUENAY. 


33 


through liis arm, and at the same moment a voice 
said, “ Those are a pair of disappointed lovers, I 
suppose.” 

He looked round and perceived the young lady 
of the party he had made up his mind to have 
nothing to do with, resting one hand on the rail, 
and sustaining herself with the other passed through 
his arm, while she was altogether intent upon the 
scene below. The ex-military gentleman, the head 
of the party, and apparently her kinsman, had 
stepped aside without her knowing, and she had 



however, was the simplest, safest, and pleasantest ; 
for the pressure of the pretty figure lightly thrown 
upon his arm had something agreeably confiding 
and appealing in it. So he waited till the young 
lady, turning to him for some response, discovered 
her error, and disengaged herself with a face of 
.singled horror and amusement. Even then he had 
no inspiration. To speak of the mistake in tones 
of compliment would have been grossly out of place ; 
an explanation was needless ; and to her murmured 
excuses, he could only bow silently. She flitted 
into the cabin, and he walked away, leaving the 
Indians to stagger ashore as they might. His arm 
seemed still to sustain that elastic weight, and a 


84 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


voice' haunted his ear with the words, ‘A pair of 
disappointed lovers, I suppose ; ” and still more 
awkward and stupid he felt his own part in the 
affair to be ; though at the same time he was not 
without some obscure resentment of the young girl’s 
mistake as an intrusion upon him. 

It was late twilight when the boat reached Ta- 
doussac, and ran into a sheltered cove under the 
shadow of uplands on which a quaint village perched 
and dispersed itself on a country road in summer 
cottages ; above these in turn rose loftier heights of 
barren sand or rock, with here and there a rank of 
sickly pines dying along their sterility. It had been 
harsh and cold all day when the boat moved, for it 
was running full in the face of the northeast ; the 
river had widened almost to a sea, growing more 
and more desolate, with a few lonely islands break- 
ing its expanse, and the shores sinking lower and 
lower till, near Tadoussac, they rose a little in flat- 
topped bluffs thickly overgrown with stunted ever- 
greens. Here, into the vast low-walled breadth of 
the St. Lawrence, a dark stream, narrowly bordered 
by rounded heights of rock, steals down from the 
north out of regions of gloomy and ever- during 
solitude. This is the Saguenay ; and in the cold 
evening light under which the traveller approaches 
its mouth, no landscape could look more forlorn 
than that of Tadoussac, where early in the six- 
teenth century the French traders fixed their first 
post, and where still the oldest church north of 
Florida is standing. 


UP TIIE SAGUENAY. 


35 


The steamer lies here five hours, and supper was 
no sooner over than the passengers went ashore in 
the gathering dusk. Mr. Arbuton, guarding his 
distance as usual, went too, with a feeling of sur- 
prise at his own concession to the popular impulse. 
He was not without a desire to see the old church, 
wondering in a half-compassionate way what such a 
bit of American antiquity would look like ; and he 
had perceived since the little embarrassment at 
Cacouna that he was a discomfort to the young lady 
involved by it. He had caught no glimpse of her 
till supper, and then she had briefly supped with an 
air of such studied unconsciousness of his presence 
that it was plain she was thinking of her mistake 
every moment. “ Well, I'll leave her the freedom 
of the boat while we stay,” thought Mr. Arbuton 
as he went ashore. He had not the least notion 
whither the road led, but like the rest he followed 
it up through the village, and on among the cottages 
which seemed for the most part empty, and so down 
a gloomy ravine, in the bottom of which, far be- 
neath the tremulous rustic bridge, he heard the 
mysterious crash and fall of an unseen torrent. 
Before him towered the shadowy hills up into the 
starless night ; he thrilled with a sense of the lone- 
liness and remoteness, and he had a formless wish 
that some one qualified by the proper associations 
and traditions were there to share the satisfaction 
he felt in the whole effect. At the same instant he 
was once more aware of that delicate pressure, that 


36 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


weight so lightly, sweetly borne upon his arm. It 
startled him, and again he followed the road, which 
with a sudden turn brought him in sight of a hotel 
and in sound of a bowling-alley, and therein young 
ladies’ cackle and laughter, and he wondered a little 
scornfully who could be spending the summer there. 
A bay of the river loftily shut in by rugged hills lay 
before him, and on the shore, just above liigh-tide, 
stood what a wandering shadow told him was the 
ancient church of Tadoussac. The windows were 
faintly tinged with red as from a single taper burn- 
ing within, and but that the elements were a little 
too bare and simple for one so used to the rich effects 
of the Old World, Mr. Arbuton might have been 
touched by the vigil which this poor chapel was still 
keeping after three hundred years in the heart of 
that gloomy place. While he stood at least toler- 
ating its appeal, he heard voices of people talking 
in the obscurity near the church door, which they 
seemed to have been vainly trying for entrance. 

“ Pity we can’t see the inside, isn’t it ? ” 

“Yes; but I am so glad to see any of it. Just 
think of its having been built in the seventeenth 
century ! ” 

“ Uncle Jack would enjoy it, wouldn’t he? ” 

“ Oh yes, poor Uncle Jack ! I feel somehow as if 
I were cheating him out of it. He ought to be here 
in my place. But I do like it ; and, Dick, I don't 
know what I can ever say or do to you and Fanny 
for bringing me.” 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 37 

“ Well, Kitty, postpone the subject till you can 
think of the right thing. We’re in no lniriy.” 

Mr. Arbuton heard a shaking of the door, as of a 
fin il attempt upon it before retreat, and then the 
voices faded into inarticulate sounds in the dark- 
ness. They were the voices, he easily recognized, 
of .the young lady who had taken his arm, and of 
that kinsman of hers, as he seemed to be. He 
blamed himself for having not only overheard 
them, but for desiring to hear more of their talk, 
and he resolved to follow them back to the boat at a 
discreet distance. But they loitered so at every 
point, or he unwittingly made such haste, that he 
had overtaken them as they entered the lane be- 
tween the outlying cottages, and he could not help 
being privy to their talk again. 

“ Well, it may be old, Kitty, but I don’t think it’s 
lively.” 

“It isn't exactly a whirl of excitement, I must 
confess.” 

“ Ic’s the deadliest place I ever saw. Is that a 
swing in front of that cottage? No, it’s a gibbet. 
Why, they’ve all got ’em ! I suppose they’re for 
the summer tenants at the close of the season. 
What a rush there would be for them if the boat 
should happen to go off and leave her passengers ! ” 

Mr. Arbuton thought this rather a coarse kind of 
drolling, and strengthened himself anew in his reso- 
lution to avoid those people. 

They now came in sight of the steamer, where iu 


88 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


the cove she lay illumined with all her lamps, and 
through every window and door and crevice was 
bursting with the ruddy light. Her brilliancy con- 
trasted vividly with the obscurity and loneliness of 
the shore, where a few lights glimmered in the vil- 
lage houses, and under the porch of the village store 
some desolate idlers — habitans and half-breeds — 
had clubbed their miserable leisure. Beyond the 
steamer yawned the wide vacancy of the greater 
river, and out of this gloomed the course of the Sa- 
gueuay. 

“ Oh, I hate to go on board ! ” said the young 
lady. “ Do you think he’s got back yet? It’s per- 
fect misery to meet him.” 

u Never mind, Kitty. He probably thinks you 
didn’t mean anything by it. I don’t believe you 
would have taken his arm if you hadn’t supposed it 
was mine, any way.” 

She made no answer to this, as if too much over- 
come by the true state of the v,ase to be troubled by 
its perversion. Mr. Arbuton, following them on 
board, felt himself in the unpleasant character of 
persecutor, some one to be shunned and escaped by 
every manoeuvre possible to self-respect. He was to 
be the means, it appeared, of spoiling the enjoyment 
of the voyage for one who, he inferred, had not often 
the opportunity of such enjoyment. He had a will- 
ingness that she should think well and not ill of 
him ; and then at the bottom of all was a sentiment 
of superiority, which, if he had given it shape, 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 39 

would have been noblesse oblige • Some action was 
due to himself as a gentleman. 

The young lady went to seek the matron of the 
party, and left her companion at the door of the 
saloon, wistfully fingering a cigar in one hand, and 
feeling for a match with the other. Presently he 
gave himself a clap on the waistcoat which he had 
found empty, and was turning away, when Mr. Ar- 
buton said, offering his own lighted cigar, “ May I 
be of use to you ? ” 

The other took it with a hearty, “ Oh yes, thank 
you ! ” and, with many inarticulate murmurs of sat- 
isfaction, lighted his cigar, and returned Mr. Ar- 
buton’s with a brisk, half-military bow. 

Mr. Arbuton looked at him narrowly a moment. 
“ I’m afraid,” he said abruptly, “ that I’ve most un- 
luckily been the cause of annoyance to one of the 
ladies of your party. It isn’t a thing to apologize 
for, and I hardly know how to say that I hope, if 
she’s not already forgotten the matter, she’ll do so.” 
Saying this, Mr. Arbuton, by an impulse which he 
would have been at a loss to explain, offered his 
card. 

1 1 is action had the effect of frankness, and the 
other took it for cordiality. He drew near a lamp, 
and looked at the name and street address on the 
card and then said, “ Ah, of Boston ! My name is 
Ellisun ; I’m of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” And he 
laughed a free, trustful laugh of good companionship. 
u Why yes, my cousin’s been tormenting herself 


40 


A CIIANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


about her mistake the whole afternoon ; but ol 
course it’s all right, you know. Bless my heart ! it 
was the most natural thing in the world. Have you 
been ashore? There’s a good deal of repose about 
Tadoussac, now , but it must be a lively place in 
winter! Such a cheerful lookout from these cot- 
tages, or that hotel over yonder ! We went over to 
see if we could get into the little olu church ; the pur- 
ser told me there are some lead tablets there, left by 
Jacques Cartier’s men, you know, and dug up in the 
neighborhood. I don't think it’s likely, and I'm bear- 
ing up very well under the disappointment of not get- 
ting in. I’ve done my duty by the antiquities of the 
place ; and now I don’t care how soon we are off.” 

Colonel Ellison was talking in the kindness of his 
heart to change the subject which the younger gen- 
tleman had introduced, in the belief, which would 
scarcely have pleased the other, that he was much 
embarrassed. His good-nature went still furthei • 
and when his cousin returned presently, with Mrs. 
Ellison, he presented Mr. Arbuton to the ladies, and 
then thoughtfully made Mrs. Ellison walk up and 
down the deck with him for the exercise she would 
not take ashore, that the others might be left to 
deal with their vexation alone. 

“I’m very sorry, Miss Ellison,” said Mr. Arbu- 
ton, “ to have been the means of a mistake to you 
to-day.” 

“ And I was dreadfully ashamed to make you the 
victim of my blunder,” answered Miss Ellison pent 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 


41 


tently ; and a little silence ensued. Then as if she 
had suddenly been able to alienate the case, and see 
it apart from herself in its unmanageable absurdity, 
she broke into a confiding laugh, very like her 
cousin's, and said, u Why, it’s one of the most hope- 
less things I ever heard of. I don’t see what in the 
world can be done about it.” 

“It is rather a difficult matter, aud I’m not pre- 
pared to say myself. Before I make up my mind 
I should like it to happen again.” 

Mr. Arbuton had no sooner made this speech, 
which he thought neat, than he was vexed with 
himself for having made it, since nothing was fur- 
ther from his purpose than a flirtation. But the 
dark, vicinity, the young girl’s prettiness, the ap- 
parent freshness and reliance on his sympathy from 
which her frankness came, were too much : he tried 
to congeal again, and ended in some feebleness about 
the scenery, which was indeed very lonely and wild, 
after the boat started up the Saguenay, leaving the 
few lights of Tadoussac to blink and fail behind her. 
He had an absurd sense of being alone in the world 
there with the young lady; and he suffered himself 
to enjoy the situation, which was as perfectly safe 
as anything could be. He and Miss Ellison had 
both come on from Niagara, it seemed, and they 
talked of that place, she consciously withholding the 
fact that she had noticed Mr. Arbuton there ; they 
had both come down the Rapids of the St. Law- 
rence, and they had both stopped a day in Montreal. 


42 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


These common experiences gave them a surprising 
interest for each other, which was enhanced by the 
discovery that their experiences differed thereafter, 
and that whereas she had passed three days at Que- 
bec, he, as we know, had come on directly from 
Montreal. 

“ Did you enjoy Quebec very much, Miss Elli- 
son ? ” 

44 Oh yes, indeed ! It’s a beautiful old town, with 
everything in it that I had always read about and 
never expected to see. You know it’s a walled 
city.” 

44 Yes. But I confess I had forgotten it till this 
morning. Did you find it all that you expected a 
walled city to be ? ” 

44 More, if possible. There were some Boston 
people with us there, and they said it was exactly 
like Europe. They fairly sighed over it, and it 
seemed to remind them of pretty nearly everything 
they had seen abroad. They were just married.” 

44 Did that make Quebec look like Europe ? ” 

u No, but I suppose it made them willing to see 
it in the pleasantest light. Mrs. March — that was 
their name — wouldn’t allow me to say that I en- 
joyed Quebec, because if I hadn’t seen Europe, I 
couldn't properly enjoy it. 4 You may think you 
enjoy it,’ she was always saying, 4 but that’s merely 
fancy.’ Still I cling to my delusion. But I don’t 
know whether I cared more for Quebec, or the beau- 
tiful little villages in the country all about it. The 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 


43 


whole landscape looks just like a dream of ‘ Evange- 
line.’ ” 

“ Indeed ! I must certainly stop at Quebec. I 
should like to see an American landscape that put 
one in mind of anything. What can your imagina- 
tion do for the present scenery ? ” 

u I don’t think it needs any help from me,” re- 
plied the young girl, as if the tone of her compan- 
ion had patronized and piqued her. She turned as 
she spoke and looked up the sad, lonely river. The 
moon was making its veiled face seen through the 
gray heaven, and touching the black stream with 
hints of melancholy light. On either hand the un- 
inhabitable shore rose in desolate grandeur, friend- 
less heights of rock with a thin covering of pines 
seen in dim outline along their tops and deepening 
into the solid dark of hollows and ravines upon their 
sides. The cry of some wild bird struck through 
the silence of which the noise of the steamer had 
grown to be a part, and echoed away to nothing. 
Then from the saloon there came on a sudden the 
notes of a song ; and Miss Ellison led the way 
within, where most of the other passengers were 
grouped about the piano. The English girl with 
the corn-colored hair sat, in ravishing picture, at 
the instrument, and the commonish man and his 
very plain wife were singing with heavenly sweet- 
ness together. 

Isn't it beautiful ! ” said Miss Ellison. “ How 
nice it must be to be able to do such things ! ” 


44 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


“Yes? do you tliink so? It’s rather public,” 
answered her companion. 

When the English people had ended, a grave, 
elderly Canadian gentleman sat down to give what 
he believed a comic song, and sent everybody dis- 
consolate to bed. 

“Well, Kitty?” cried Mrs. Ellison, shutting 
herself inside the young lady’s state-room a mo- 
ment. 

“ Well, Fanny ? ” 

“ Isn't he handsome ? ” 

“ He is, indeed.” 

“ Is he nice ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ Sweet ? ” 

“ ice-cream,” said Kitty, and placidly let herself 
be kissed an enthusiastic good night. Before Mrs. 
Ellison slept she wished to ask her husband one 
question. 

“ What is it ? ” 

“ Should you want Kitty to marry a Bostonian ? 
They say Bostonians are so cold.” 

“ What Bostonian has been asking Kitty to 
marry him ? ” 

“ Oh, how spiteful you are ! I didn’t say any 
had. But if there should ? ” 

“Then it'll be time to think about it. You’ve 
married Kitty right and left to everybody who’s 
looked at her since we left Niagara, and I've wor- 
ried myself to death investigating the character ol 


UP THE SAGUENAY. 45 

her husbands. Now I’m not going to do it any 
longer, — till she has an offer.” 

“ Very well. You can depreciate your own 
cousin, if you like. But I know what I shall do. 
I shall let her wear all my best things. IIow for- 
tunate it is, Richard, that we’re exactly of a size ! 
Oh, I am so ghid we brought Kitty along ! If she 
should marry and settle down in Boston — no, I 
hope she could get her husband to live in New 
York ” — 

“ Go on, go on, my dear ! ” cried Colonel Elli- 
son, with a groan of despair. “ Kitty has talked 
twenty-five minutes with this young man about the 
hotels and steamboats, and of course he’ll be round 
to-morrow morning asking my consent to marry her 
as soon as we can get to a justice of the peace. My 
hair is gradually turning gray, and I shall be bald 
before my time ; but I don’t mind that if you find 
any pleasure in these little hallucinations of yours. 
Go on ! ” 


II. 


MRS. ELLISON’S LITTLE MANCETTV RE. 

The next morning our tourists found themselves 
f.t rest in Ila-IIa Bay, at the head of navigation for 
the larger steamers. The long line of sullen htBs 
had fallen away, and the morning sun shone warm 

on what in a 
friendlier cli- 
mate would 
have been a 
very lovely 
landscape. The 
bay was an ir- 
regular oval, 
with shores 
that rose in 
bold but not 
lofty heights on 
one side, while 
on the other lay a narrow plain with two villages 
clinging about the road that followed the crescent 
beach, and lifting each the slender tin-clad spire of 
its church to sparkle in the sun. 

At the head of the bay was a mountainous top, 
and along its waters were masses of rocks, gayly 



MRS. ELLISON’S LITTLE MANOEUVRE. 47 

painted with lichens and stained with metallic tints 
of orange and scarlet. The unchanging growth of 
stunted pines was the only forest in sight, though 
Ha-Ha Bay is a famous lumbering port, and some 
schooners now lay there receiving cargoes of odorous 
pine plank. The steamboat- wharf was all astir with 
the liveliest toil and leisure. The boat was taking 
on wood, which was brought in wheelbarrows to the 
top of the steep, smooth gangway-planking, where 
the habitant in charge planted his broad feet for the 
downward slide, and was hurled aboard more or less 
en masse by the fierce velocit} 7- of his heavy-laden 
wheelbarrow. Amidst the confusion and hazard of 
this feat a procession of other habitans marched 
aboard, each one bearing under his arm a coffin- 
shaped wooden box. The rising fear of Colonel 
Ellison, that these boxes represented the loss of the 
whole infant population of Ha-Ha Bay, was checked 
by the reflection that the region could not have pro- 
duced so many children, and calmed altogether by 
the purser, who said that they were full of huckle- 
berries, and that Colonel Ellison could have as 
many as he liked for fifteen cents a bushel. This 
gave him a keen sense of the poverty of the land, 
and he bought of the boys who came aboard such 
abundance of wild red raspberries, in all manner of 
birch-bark canoes and goblets and cornucopias, that 
he was obliged to make presents of them to the very 
dealers whose stock he had exhausted, and he was 
in treaty with the local half-wit — very fine, with a 


48 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


hunchback, and a massive wen on one side of his 
head — to take charity in the wild fruits of his na- 
tive province, when the crowd about him was gently 
opened by a person who advanced with a flourishing 
bow and a sprightly “ Good morning, good morning, 
sir!” “How do you do?” asked Colonel Elli- 
son ; but the other, intent on business, answered, 
44 1 am the only person at Ha-Ha Bay who speaks 
English, and I have come to ask if you would not 
like to make a promenade in my horse and buggy 
upon the mountain before breakfast. You shall be 
gone as long as you will for one shilling and six- 
pence. I will show you all that there is to be seen 
about the place, and the beautiful view of the bay 
from the top of the mountain. But it is elegant, 
you know, I can assure you.” 

The speaker was so fluent of his English, he had 
such an audacious, wide-branching mustache, such 
a twinkle in his left eye, — which wore its lid in a 
careless, slouching fashion, — that the heart of man 
naturally clove to him ; and Colonel Ellison agreed 
on the spot to make the proposed promenade, for 
himself and both his ladies, of whom he went joy- 
fully in search. He found them at the stern of the 
boat, admiring the wild scenery, and looking 

“ Fresh as the morn and as the season fair.” 

He was not a close observer, and of his wife’s ward- 
robe he had the ignorance of a good husband, who, 
as soon as the pang of paying for her dresses is past 


MRS. ELLISON’S LITTLE MANOEUVRE. 


49 


forgets whatever she has ; hut he could not help 
seeing that some gayeties of costume which he had 
dimly associated with his wife now enhanced the 
charms of his cousin’s nice little face and figure. A 
scarf of lively hue carelessly tied about the throat to 
keep off the morning chill, a prettier ribbon, a more 
stylish jacket than Miss Ellison owned, — what do 
I know ? — an air of preparation for battle, caught 
the colonel's eye, and a conscious red stole respon- 
sive into Kitty’s cheek. 

“ Kitty,” said he, “ don’t you let yourself be 
made a goose of.” 

“ I hope she won’t — by you /” retorted his wife, 
“and I’ll thank you, Colonel Ellison, not to be a 
Betty, whatever you are. I don’t think it’s manly 
to be always noticing ladies’ clothes.” 

“ Who said anything about clothes ? ” demanded 
the colonel, taking his stand upon the letter. 

“ Well, don’t you , at any rate. Yes, I'd like to 
ride, of all things ; and we’ve time enough, for 
breakfast isn’t ready till half past eight. Where’s 
the carriage ? ” 

The only English scholar at Ha-Ha Bay had 
taken the light wraps of the ladies and was moving 
off with them. “ This way, this way,” he said, 
waving his hand towards a larger number of ve- 
hicles on the shore than could have been reasonably 
attributed to Ha-Ha Bay. “ I hope you won’t 
object to having another passenger with you? 
There’s plenty of room for all. He seems a very 

4 


50 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


nice, gentlemanly person,” said he, with a queer, 
patronizing graciousness which he had no doubt 
caught from his English patrons. 

“ The more the merrier,” answered Colonel Elli- 
son, and “ Not in the least!” said his wife, not 
meaning the proverb. Her eye had swept the 
whole array of vehicles and had found them all 
empty, save one, in which she detected the blame- 
lessly coated back of Mr. Arbuton. But I ought 
perhaps to explain Mrs. Ellison’s motives better 
than they can be made to appear in her conduct. 
She cared nothing for Mr. Arbuton ; and she had 
no logical wish to see Kitty in love with him. But 
here were two young people thrown somewhat ro- 
mantically together ; Mrs. Ellison was a born match- 
maker, and to have refrained from promoting their 
better acquaintance in the interest of abstract mat- 
rimony was what never could have entered into her 
thought or desire; Her whole being closed for the 
time about this purpose ; her heart, always warm 
towards Kitty, — whom she admired with a sort of 
generous frenzy, — expanded with all kinds of 
lovely designs ; in a word, every dress she had she 
would instantly have bestowed upon that worshipful 
creature who was capable of adding another mar- 
riage to the world. I hope the reader finds nothing 
vu ] gar or unbecoming in this, for I do not ; it was 
an enthusiasm, pure and simple, a beautiful and un- 
selfish abandon ; and I am sure men ought to be 
sorry that they are not worthier to be favored by it. 


MRS. ELLISON’S LITTLE MANOEUVRE. 51 

Ladies have often to lament in the midst of their 
finesse that, really, no man is deserving the fate 
they devote themselves to prepare for him, or, in 
other words, that women cannot marry women. 

I am not going to be so rash as try to depict 
Mrs. Ellison’s arts, for then, indeed, I should make 
her appear the clumsy conspirator she was not, and 
should merely convict myself of ignorance of such 
matters. Whether Mr. Arbuton was ever aware of 
them, I am not sure : as a man he was, of course, 
obtuse and blind ; but then, on the other hand, he 
had seen far more of the world than Mrs. Ellison, 
and she may have been clear as day to him. Prob- 
ably, though, he did not detect any design ; he 
could not have conceived of such a thing in a person 
with whom he had been so irregularly made ac- 
quainted, and to whom he felt himself so hopelessly 
superior. A film of ice such as in autumn you find 
casing the still pools early in the frosty mornings 
had gathered upon lus manner over night ; but it 
thawed under the greetings of the others, and he 
jumped actively out of the vehicle to offer the ladies 
their choice of seats. When all was arranged he 
found himself at Mrs. Ellison’s side, for Kitty had 
somewhat eagerly climbed to the front seat with the 
colonel. In these circumstances it was pure zeal 
that sustained Mrs. Ellison in the flattering con- 
stancy with which she babbled on to Mr. Arbuton 
and refrained from openly resenting Kitty’s con« 
tumacy. 


52 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


As the wagon began to ascend the hill, the road 
was so rough that the springs smote together with 
pitiless jolts, and the ladies uttered some irrepressible 
moans. “Never mind, my dear,” said the colonel, 
turning about to his wife, “ we’ve got all the English 
there is at Ha-Ha Bay, any way.” Whereupon the 
driver gave him a wink of sudden liking and good- 
fellowship. At the same time his tongue was loosed, 
and he began to talk of himself. “ You see my 
dog, how he leaps at the horse’s nose? He is a 
m^ose-dog, and keeps himself in practice of catching 
the moose by the nose. You ought to come in the 
hunting season. I could furnish you with Indians 
and everything you need to hunt with. I am a 
dealer in wild beasts, you know, and I must keep 
prepared to take them.” 

“Wild beasts?” 

“ Yes, for Barnum and the other showmen. I deal 
in deer, wolf, bear, beaver, moose, cariboo, wild- 
cat, link ” — 

“ What? ” 

“ Link — link ! You say deer for deers, and link 
for lynx, don’t you ? ” 

“ Certainly,” answered the unblushing colonel. 
“ Are there many link about here ? ” 

“Not many, and they are a very expensive ani- 
mal. I have been shamefully treated in a link that 
I have sold to a Boston showman. It was a difficult 
beast to take ; bit my Indian awfully ; and Mr. Doo- 
little would not give the price he promised.” 


mks. Ellison’s little man(euvre. 53 

“ What an outrage ! ” 

“ Yes, but it was not so bad as it might have 
been. He wanted the money back afterwards; the 
link died in about two weeks,” said the dealer in 
wild animals, with a smile that curled his mus- 
tache into his ears, and a glance at Colonel Ellison. 
“He may have been bruised, I suppose. He may 
have been homesick. Perhaps he was never a very 
strong link. The link is a curious animal, miss,” he 
said to Kitty, in conclusion. 

They had been slowly climbing the mountain road, 
from which, on either hand, the pasture-lands fell 
away in long, irregular knolls and hollows. The 
tops were quite barren, but in the little vales, de- 
spite the stones, a short grass grew very thick and 
tenderly green, and groups of kine tinkled their soft 
bells in a sweet, desultory assonance as they cropped 
the herbage. Below, the bay filled the oval of the 
hills with its sunny expanse, and the white steamer, 
where she lay beside the busy wharf, and the black 
lumber-ships, gave their variety to the pretty scene, 
which was completed by the picturesque villages on 
the shore. It was a very simple sight, but somehow 
very touching, as if the soft spectacle were but a 
respite from desolation and solitude ; as indeed it 
was. 

Mr. Arbuton must have been talking of travel 
elsewhere, for now he said to Mrs. Ellison, “ This 
looks like a bit of Norway ; the bay yonder might 
very well be a fjord of the Northern sea.” 


54 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


Mrs. Ellison murmured her sense of obligation to 
the bay, the fjord, and Mr. Arbuton, for their com 
plaisance, and Kitty remembered that he had some- 
what snubbed her the night before for attributing any 
suggestive grace to the native scenery. 44 Then 
you've really found something in an American land* 
scape. 1 suppose we ought to congratulate it,” she 
said, in smiling enjoyment of her triumph. 

The colonel looked at her with eyes of humorous 
question ; Mrs. Ellison looked blank; and Mr. Ar- 
buton, having quite forgotten what he had said to 
provoke this comment now, looked puzzled and an- 
swered nothing ; for he had this trait also in common 
with the sort of Englishman for whom he was taken, 
that he never helped out your conversational ven- 
ture, but if he failed to respond uwardly, left you 
with your unaccepted remark upon your hands, as 
it were. In his silence, Kitty fell a prey to very 
evil thoughts of him, for it made her harmless sally 
look like a blundering attack upon him. But just 
then the driver came to her rescue; he said, 44 Gen- 
tlemen and ladies, this is the end of the mountain 
promenade,” and, turning his horse’s head, drove 
rapidly back to the village. 

At the foot of the hill they came again to the 
church, and his passengers wanted to get out and 
look into it. 44 Oh, certainly,” said he, 44 it isn’t fin- 
ished yet, but you can say as many prayers as you 
like in it.” 

The church was decent and clean, like most Ca- 


mrs. ellison's little man(euvre. 


55 


nadian churches, and at this early hour there was a 
good number of the villagers at their devotions. 
The lithographic pictures of the stations to Calvary 
were, of course, on its walls, and there was the ordi- 
nary tawdriness of paint and carving about the high 
altar. 

“ I don’t like to see these things,” said Mrs. Elli- 
Bon. “ It really seems to savor of idolatry. Don’t 
you think so, Mr. Arbuton ? ” 

“ W ell, I don’t know. I doubt if they’re the sort 
of people to be hurt by it.” 

“ They need a good stout faith in cold climates, I 
can tell you,” said the colonel. “ It helps to keep 
them warm. The broad church would be too full 
of draughts up here. They want something snug 
and tight. Just imagine one of these poor devils 
listening to a liberal sermon about birds and fruits 
and flowers and beautiful sentiments, and then driv- 
ing home over the hills with the mercury thirty 
degrees below zero ! He couldn’t stand it.” 

“ Yes, yes, certainly,” said Mr. Arbuton, and 
looked about him with an eye of cold, uncompas- 
sionate inspection, as if he were trying it by a stand- 
ard of taste, and, on the whole, finding the poor little 
church vulgar. 

When they mounted to their places again, the 
talk fell entirely to the colonel, who, as his wont 
was, got what information he could out of the driver. 
It appeared, in spite of his theory, that they 
were not all good Catholics at Ha-Ha Bay. “ This 


56 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


chap, for example,” said the Frenchman, touching 
himself on the breast and using the slang he must 
have picked up from American travellers, “ is no 
Catholic, — not much! He has made too many 
studies to care for religion. There’s a large French 
party, sir, in Canada, that’s opposed to the priests 
and in favor of annexation.” 

lie satisfied the colonel’s utmost curiosity, dis- 
coursing, as he drove by the log-built cottages which 
were now and then sheathed in birch bark, upon 
the local affairs, and the character and history of 
such of his fellow-vil lagers as they met. He knew 
the pretty girls upon the street, and saluted them by 
name, interrupting himself with these courtesies in 
the lecture he was giving the colonel on life at Ha- 
Ha Bay. There was only one brick house which 
he had built himself, but had been obliged to sell in 
a season unfavorable for wild beasts), and the other 
edifices dropped through the social scale to some 
picturesque barns thatched with straw. These he 
excused to his Americans, but added that the un- 
gainly thatch was sometimes useful in saving the 
lives of the cattle toward the end of an unusually 
long, hard winter. 

“ And the people,” asked the colonel, “ what do 
they do in the winter to pass the time ? ” 

u Draw the wood, smoke the pipe, court the 
ladies. But wouldn’t you like to see the inside 
of one of our poor cottages ? I shall be very 
proud to have you look at mine, and to have you 


MRS. ELLISON’S LITTLE MANOEUVRE. 


57 


drink a glass of milk from my cows. I am sorry 
that I cannot offer you brandy, but there’s none 
to be bought in the place.” 

“ Don’t speak of it ! For an eye-opener there 
is nothing like a glass of milk,” gayly answered 
the colonel. 

They entered the best room of the house, — 
wide, low-ceiled, dimly lit by two small windows, 
and fortified against the winter by a huge Canada 
stove of cast-iron. It was rude but neat, and had 
an air of decent comfort. Through the window 
appeared a very little vegetable garden with a bor- 
der of the hardiest flowers. u The large beans 
there,” explained the host, u are for soup and coffee. 
My corn,” he said, pointing out some rows of dwarf- 
ish maize, “ lias escaped the early August frosts, 
and so I expect to have some roasting-ears yet this 
summer.” 

“ Well, it isn’t exactly what you’d call an inviting 
climate, is it ? ” asked the colonel. 

The Canadian seemed a hard little man, but he 
answered now with a kind of pathos, “ It’s cruel ! 
I came here when it was all bush. Twenty years 
I have lived here, and it has not been worth while. 
If it was to do over again, I should rather not live 
anywhere. I was born in Quebec,” he said, as if 
to explain that he was used to mild climates, and 
began to tell of some events of his life at Ila-IIa 
Bay. u 1 wish you were going to stay here awhile 
with me. You wouldn’t find it so bad in the sum- 


58 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


mer-time, T can assure you. There are beai-s in the 
bush, sir,” he said to the colonel, “and you might 
easily kill one.” 

“ But then I should be helping to spoil your trade 
in wild beasts,” replied the colonel, laughing. 

Mr. Arbuton looked like one who might be very 
tired of this. lie made no sign of interest either in 
the early glooms and privations or the summer 
bears of Ha-Ha Bay. He sat in the quaint parlor, 
with his hat on his knee, in the decorous and patient 
attitude of a gentleman making a call. 

He had no feeling, Kitty said to herself; but that 
is a matter about which we can easily be wrong. 
It was rather to be said of Mr. Arbuton that he 
had always shrunk from knowledge of things out- 
side of a very narrow world, and that he had not a 
ready imagination. Moreover, he had a personal 
dislike, as I may call it, of poverty ; and he did 
not enjoy this poverty as she did, because it was 
strange and suggestive, though doubtless he would 
have done as much to relieve distress. 

“ Rather too much of his autobiography,” he said 
to Kitty, as he waited outside the door with her, 
while the Canadian quieted his dog, which was 
again keeping himself in practice of catching the 
moose by making vicious leaps at the horse's nose. 
“ The egotism of that kind of people is always so 
aggressive. But I suppose he’s in the habit of throw- 
ing himself upon the sympathy of summer visitors 
in this way. You can’t offer a man so little as shil* 


MRS. ELLISON S LITTLE MANOEUVRE. 


59 


ling and sixpence who’s taken you info his confi- 
dence. Did you find enough that was novel in his 
place to justify him in bringing us here, Miss 
Ellison ? ” he asked, with an air he had of tak ; ng 
you of course to be of his mind, and which equally 
offended you whether you were so or not. 

Every face that they had seen in their drive had 
told its pathetic story to Kitty ; every cottage that 
they passed she had entered in thought, and dreamed 
out its humble drama. What their host had said 
gave breath and color to her fancies of the struggle 
of life there, and she was startled and shocked 
when this cold doubt was cast upon the sympathetic 
tints of her picture. She did not know what to say 
at first ; she looked at Mr. Arbuton with a sudden 
glance of embarrassment and trouble ; then she an- 
swered, “ I was very much interested. I don’t agree 
with you, I believe ; ” which, when she heard it, 
seemed a resentful little speech, and made her will- 
ing for some occasion to Soften its effect. But 
nothing occurred to her during the brief drive back 
to the boat, save the fact that the morning air was 
delicious. 

“ Yes, but rather cool,” said Mr. Arbuton, Whose 
feelings apparently had not needed any balm ; and 
the talk fell again to the others. 

On the pier he helped her down from the wagon, 
for the colonel was intent on something the driver 
was saying, and then offered his hand to Mrs. 
Ellison. 


60 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


She sprang from her place, but stumbled slightly, 
and when she touched the ground, “ I believe I 
turned my foot a little,” she said with a laugh. 
“It’s nothing, of course,” and fainted in his aims. 

Kitty gave a cry of alarm, and the next instant 
the colonel had relieved Mr. Arbuton. It was a 
scene, and nothing could have annoyed him more 
than this tumult which poor Mrs. Ellison’s mis- 
fortune occasioned among the bystanding habitant 
and deck-hands, and the passengers eagerly cran- 
ing forward over the bulwarks, and running ashore 
to see what the matter was. Few men know just 
how to offer those little offices of helpfulness which 
such emergencies demand, and Mr. Arbuton could 
do nothing after he was rid of his burden ; he 
hovered anxiously and uselessly about, while Mrs. 
Ellison was carried to an airy position on the bow 
of the boat, where in a few minutes he had the 
great satisfaction of seeing her open her eyes. It 
was not the moment? for him to speak, and he 
walked somewhat guiltily away with the dispersing 
crowd. 

Mrs. Ellison addressed her first words to pale 
Kitty at her side. You can have all my things, 
now,” she said, as if it were a clause in her will, 
and perhaps it had been her last thought before un- 
consciousness. 

“ Why, Fanny,” cried Kitty, with an hysterica, 
laugh, “ you’re not going to die ! A sprained ankle 
isn't fatai ! ” 



And fainted in his arms. — Page 60 





MRS. ELLISON'S LITTLE MANOEUVRE. 


61 


“ No ; but I’ve heard that a person with a sprained 
ankle can’t put their foot to the ground for weeks ; 
and I shall only want a dressing-gown, yon knew, 
to lie on the sofa in.” With that, Mrs, Ellison 
placed her hand tenderly on Kitty’s head, like a 
mother wondering what will become of a helpless 
child during her disability ; in fact she was men- 
tally weighing the advantages of her wardrobe, 
which Kitty would now fully enjoy, against the loss 
of the friendly strategy which she would now lack. 
Helpless to decide the matter, she heaved a sigh. 

“ But, Fanny, you won't expect to travel in a 
dressing-gown.” 

“ Indeed, I wish I knew whether I could travel in 
anything or not. But the next twenty-four hours 
will show. If it swells up, I shall have to rest 
awhile at Quebec ; and if it doesn’t, there may be 
something internal. I’ve read of accidents when 
the person thought they were perfectly well and 
comfortable, and the first thing they knew they 
were in a very dangerous state. That’s the worst 
of these internal injuries: you never can tell. Not 
that I think there’s anything of that kind the mat- 
ter with me. But a few days’ rest won’t do iny 
.iarm, whatever happens ; the stores in Quebec are 
quite as good and a little cheaper than in Montreal • 
and I could go about in a carriage, you know, and 
put in the time as well in one place as the other. 
I’m sure we could get on very pleasantly there ; and 
the colonel needn’t be home for a month yet. I 


62 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 

suppose that I could hobble into the stores on a 
crutch ” 

Whilst Mrs. Ellison’s monologue ran on with 
scarcely a break from Kitty, her husband was gone 
to fetch her a cup of tea and such other light re- 
freshment as a lady may take after a swoon. When 
he returned she bethought herself of Mr. Arbuton, 
who, having once come back to see if all was going 
we] 1 had vanished again. 

44 Why, our friend Boston is bearing up under his 
share of the morning’s work like a hero — or a lady 
with a sprained ankle,” said the colonel as he ar- 
ranged the provision. “ To see the havoc lie’s mak- 
ing in the ham and eggs and chiccory is to be con- 
vinced that there is no appetizer like regret for the 
sufferings of others.” 

44 Why, and here’s poor Kitty not had a bite 
yet ! ” cried Mrs. Ellison. “ Kitty, go off at once 
and get your breakfast. Put on my ” — 

44 Oh, don't , Fanny, or I can't go ; and I'm really 
very hungry.” 

44 Well, 1 won’t then,” said Mrs. Ellison, seeing 
the rainy cloud in Kitty’s eyes. 44 Go just as you 
are, and don't mind me.” And so Kitty went, 
gathering courage at every pace, and sitting down 
opposite Mr. Arbuton with a vivid color to be sure, 
but otherwise lion-bold. He had been upbraiding 
the stars that had thrust him further and further 
at every step into the intimacy of these people, as 
he called them to himself. It was just twenty-four 


mrs. ellison’s little manoeuvre. 68 

hours, he reflected, since he had met them, and re- 
solved to have nothing to do with them, and in that 
time the young lady had brought him under the e- 
cessity of apologizing for a blunder of her own ; he 
had played the eavesdropper to her talk ; he had 
sentimentalized the midnight hour with her ; they 
had all taken a morning ride together ; and he had 
ended by having Mrs. Ellison sprain her ankle and 
faint in his arms. • It was outrageous ; and what 
made it worse was that decency obliged him to take 
henceforth a regretful, deprecatory attitude towards 
Mrs. Ellison, whom he liked least among these peo- 
ple. So he sat vindictively eating an enormous 
breakfast, in a sort of angry abstraction, from which 
Kitty’s coming roused him to say that he hoped 
Mrs. Ellison was better. 

“ Oh, very much ! It’s just a sprain.” 

“ A sprain may be a very annoying thing,” said 
Mr. Arbuton dismally. “ Miss Ellison,” he cried, 
“ I’ve been nothing but an affliction to your party 
since I came on board this boat ! ” 

“ Do you think evil genius of our party would bo 
too harsh a term ? ” suggested Kitty. 

“ Not in the least ; it would be a mere euphe- 
mism, — base flattery, in fact. Call me something 
worse.” 

“ I can’t think of anything. I must leave you to 
vour own conscience. It was a pity to end our ride 
in that way ; it would have been such a pleasant 
ride ! ” And Kitty took heart from his apparent 


64 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


mood to speak of some facts of the morning that 
had moved her fancy. “ What a strange little nest 
it is up here among these half-tliawed hills ! and 
imagine the winter, the fifteen or twenty months of 
it, they must have every year. I could almost have 
shed tears over that patch of corn that had escaped 
the early August frosts. I suppose this is a sort of 
Indian summer that we are enjoying now, and that 
the cold weather will set in after a week or two. 
My cousin and I thought that Tadoussac was some- 
what retired and composed last night, but I'm sure 
that I shall see it in its true light, as a metropolis, 
going back. I’m afraid that the turmoil and bustle 
of Eriecreek, when I get home ” — 

“ Eriecreek ? — when you get home ? — I thought 
you lived at Milwaukee.” 

“ Oh, no ! It’s my cousins who live at Milwau- 
kee. I live at Eriecreek, New York State.” 

“ Oh ! ” Mr. Arbuton looked blank and not 
altogether pleased. Milwaukee was bad enough, 
though he understood that it was largely peopled 
from New England, and had a great German ele- 
ment, which might account for the fact that these 
people were not quite barbaric. But this Eriecreek, 
New York State ! “ I don’t think I’ve heard of it,” 
he said. 

“ It’s a small place,” observed Kitty, “ and I be- 
lieve it isn’t noted for anything in particular ; it’s 
not even on any railroad. It’s in the northwest 
part of the State.” 


MRS. ELLISON’S LITTLE MANCEUVRE. 65 

“ Isn’t it in the oil-regions ? ” groped Mr. A rbu- 
ton. 

“ Why, the oil-regions are rather migratory, you 
know. It used to be in the oil-regions; but the oil 
was pumped out, and then the oil-regions gracefully 
withdrew and left the cheese-regions and grapt -re- 
gions to come back and take possession of the old 
derricks and the rusty boilers. You might suppose 
from the appearance of the meadows, that all the 
boilers that ever blew up had come down in the 
neighborhood of Eriecreek. And every field has its 
derrick standing just as the last dollar or the last 
drop of oil left it.” 

Mr. Arbuton brought his fancy to bear upon 
Eriecreek, and wholly failed to conceive of it. He 
did not like the notion of its being thrust within 
the range of his knowledge ; and he resented its be- 
ing the home of Miss Ellison, whom he was begin- 
ning to accept as a not quite comprehensible yet 
certainly agreeable fact, though he still had a dis- 
position to cast her off as something incredible. He 
asked no further about Eriecreek, and presently she 
rose and went to join her relatives, and he went to 
smoke his cigar, and to ponder upon the problem 
presented to him in this young girl from whose lo- 
cality and conjecturable experiences he was at loss 
how to infer her as he found her here. 

She had a certain self-reliance mingling with an 
mnocent trust of others, which Mrs. Isabel March 
had described to her husband as a charm potent to 
5 


66 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


make everybody sympathetic and good-natured, but 
which it would not be easy to account for to Mr. 
Arbuton. In part it was a natural gift, and partly 
it came from mere ignorance of the world ; it was 
the unsnubbed fearlessness of a heart which did not 
suspect a sense of social difference in others, or im- 
agine itself misprized for anything but a fault. For 
such a false conception of her relations to polite so- 
ciety, Kitty’s Uncle Jack was chiefly to blame. In 
the fierce democracy of his revolt from his Virginian 
traditions he had taught his family that a belief in 
any save intellectual and moral distinctions was a 
mean and cruel superstition ; he had contrived to 
fix this idea so deeply in the education of his chil- 
dren, that it gave a coloring to their lives, and 
Kitty, when her turn came, had the effect of it in 
the character of those about her. In fact she ac- 
cepted his extreme theories of equality to a degree 
that delighted her uncle, who, having held them 
many years, was growing perhaps a little languid 
in their tenure, and was glad to have his grasp 
strengthened by her faith. Socially as well as po- 
litically Eriecreek was almost a perfect democracy, 
and there was little in Kitty’s circumstances to con- 
tradict the doctor’s teachings. The brief visits 
which she had made to Buffalo and Erie, and, since 
the colonel’s marriage, to Milwaukee, had not suf- 
ficed to undeceive her ; she had never suffered slight 
save from the ignorant and uncouth ; she innocently 
expected that in people of culture she should always 


mrs. Ellison’s little manoeuvre. 


67 


find community of feeling and ideas ; and she liad 
met Mr. Arbuton all the more trustfully because as 
a Bostonian lie must be cultivated. 

In the secluded life which she led perforce at 
Eriecreek there was an abundance of leisure, which 
she bestowed upon books at an age when most girls 
are sent to school. The doctor had a good taste of 
an old-fashioned kind in literature, and he had a 
library pretty well stocked with the elderly English 
authors, poets and essayists and novelists, and here 
and there an historian, and these Kitty read child- 
like, liking them at the time in a certain way, and 
storing up in her mind things that she did not un- 
derstand for the present, but whose beauty and 
value dawned upon her from time to time, as she 
grew older. But of far more use and pleasure to 
her than these now somewhat mouldy classics were 
the more modern books of her cousin Charles, 
— that pride and hope of* his father’s heart, who 
had died the year before she came to Eriecreek. 
He was named after her own father, and it was as 
if her Uncle Jack found both his son and his brother 
in her again. When her taste for reading began to 
show itself in force, the old man .one day unlocked 
a certain bookcase in a little upper room, and gave 
her the key, saying, with a broken pride and that 
queer Virginian pomp which still clung to him, 
“ This was my son’s, who would one day have been 
a great writer ; now it is yours.” After that the 
doctor would pick up the books out of this collection 


68 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


wliich Kitty was reading and had left lying about 
the rooms, and look into them a little way. Seme- 
times he fell asleep over them ; sometimes when he 
opened on a page penciled with marginal notes, he 
would put the volume gently down and go very 
quickly out of the room. 

“ Kitty, I reckon you’d better not leave poor 
Charley’s books around where Uncle Jack can get 
at them,” one of the girls, Virginia or Rachel, 
would say ; “ I don’t believe he cares much for 
those writers, and the sight of the books just tries 
him.” So Kitty kept the books, and herself for 
the most part with them, in the upper chamber 
which had been Charles Ellison's room, and where, 
amongst the witnesses of the dead boy’s ambitious 
dreams, she grew dreamer herself and seemed to in- 
herit with his earthly place his own line and gentle 
spirit. 

The doctor, as his daughter suggested, did not 
care much for the modern authors in whom his son 
had delighted. Like many another simple and 
pure hearted man, he thought that since Pope there 
had been no great poet but Byron, and he could 
make nothing out of Tennyson and Browning, or 
the other contemporary English poets. Amongst 
the Americans he had a great respect for Whittier, 
but he preferred Lowell to the rest because he had 
written “ The Biglow Papers,” and he never would 
allow that the last series was half so good as the 
first. These and the other principal poets of out 


MRS. ELLISON’S LITTLE MAN(EUVRE. 69 

nation and language Kitty inlierited from her 
cousin, as well as a full stock of the contemporary 
novelists and romancers, whom she liked better 
than the poets, on the whole. She had also the ad- 
vantage of the magazines and reviews which used to 
come to him, and the house overflowed with news- 
papers of every kind, from the “ Eriecreek Courier ” 
to the “ New York Tribune.” What with the com- 
ing and going of the eccentric visitors, and this con- 
tinual reading, and her rides about the country with 
her Uncle Jack, Kitty’s education, such as it was, 
went on very actively and with the effect, at least, 
to give her a great liveliness of mind and several 
decided opinions. Where it might have warped 
her out of natural simplicity, and made her con- 
ceited, the keen and wholesome airs which breathed 
continually in the Ellison household came in to re- 
store her. There was such kindness in this dis- 
cipline, that she never could remember when it 
wounded her ; it was part of the gayety of those 
times when she would sit down with the girls, and 
they took up some work together, and rattled on in 
a free, wild, racy talk, with an edge of satire for 
whoever came near, a fantastic excess in its drollery, 
and just a touch of native melancholy tingeing it. 
The last queer guest, some neighborhood gossip, 
some youthful folly or pretentiousness of Kitty’s, 
some trait of their own, some absurdity of the boys 
if they happened to be at home, and came lounging 
in, were the themes out of which they contrived 


70 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 

such jollity as never was, save when in Uncle Jack’s 
presence they fell upon some characteristic action 
or theory of his, and turned it into endless ridicule. 

But of such people, of such life, Mr. Arbuton 
could have made nothing if he had known them. 
In many things he was an excellent person, and 
greatly to be respected for certain qualities. lie 
was very sincere ; his mind had a singular purity 
and rectitude ; he was a scrupulously just person 
so far as he knew. He had traits that would have 
fitted him very well for the career he had once 
contemplated, and he had even made some prelim- 
inary studies for the ministry. But the very gen- 
erosity of his creed perplexed him, his mislikers 
said ; contending that he could never have got on 
with the mob of the redeemed. “ Arbuton,” said 
a fat young fellow, the supposed wit of the class, 
“ thinks there are persons of low extraction in 
heaven ; but he doesn’t like the idea.” And Mr. 
Arbuton did not like the speaker very well, either, 
nor any of his poorer fellow-students, whose glove- 
less and unfashionable poverty, and meagre board 
and lodgings, and general hungry dependence upcn 
pious bequests and neighborhood kindnesses, of- 
fended his instincts. “ So he’s given it up, has 
he ? ” moralized the same wit, upon his retirement. 
“If Arbuton could have been a divinely com- 
missioned apostle to the best society, and been 
obliged to save none but well-connected, old-estab- 
lished, and cultivated souls, he might have gone 


MRS. ELLISON’S LITTLE MANOEUVRE. 


71 


into the ministry.” This was a coarse construe* 
tion of the truth, but it was not altogether a per- 
version. It was long ago that he had abandoned 
the tli ought of the ministry, and he had since 
travelled, and read law, and become a man of 
society and of clubs ; but he still kept the traits 
that had seemed to make his vocation clear. On 
the other hand he kept the prejudices that were 
imagined to have disqualified him. He was an 
exclusive by training and by instinct. lie gave 
ordinary humanity credit for a certain measure of 
sensibility, and it is possible that if he had known 
more kinds of men, he would have recognized 
merits and excellences which did not now exist for 
him ; but I do not think lie would have liked 
them. His doubt of these Western people was the 
most natural, if not the most justifiable thing in 
the world, and for Kitty, if he could have known 
all about her, I do not see how he could have be- 
lieved in her at all. As it was, he went in search 
of her party, when he had smoked his cigar, and 
found them on the forward promenade. She had 
left him in quite a lenient mood, although, as she 
perceived with amusement, he had done nothing 
tc merit it, except give her cousin a sprained ankle. 
At the moment of his reappearance, Mrs. Ellison 
had been telling Kitty that she thought it was be- 
ginning to swell a little, and so it could not be any- 
thing internal ; and Kitty had understood that she 
meant her ankle as well as if she had said so, and 


72 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


had sorrowed and rejoiced over her, and the colonel 
had been inculpated for the whole affair. This 
made Mr. Arbuton’s excuses rather needless, though 
they were most graciously received. 


in. 


ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 

By tins time the boat was moving down the 
river, and every one was alive to the scenery. The 
procession of the pine-clad, rounded heights on 
either shore began shortly after Ha-Ha Bay had 
disappeared behind a curve, and it hardly ceased, 
save at one point, before the boat reentered the St. 
Lawrence. The shores of the stream are almost 
uninhabited. The hills rise from the water’s edge, 
and if ever a narrow vale divides them, it is but to 
open drearier solitudes to the eye. In such a valley 
would stand a saw-mill, and huddled about it a few 
poor huts, while a friendless road, scarce discernible 
from the boat, wound up from the river through the 
valley, and led to wildernesses all the forlorner for 
the devastation of their forests. Now and then an 
island, rugged as the shores, broke the long reaches 
of the grim river with its massive rock and dark 
evergreen, and seemed in the distance to forbid es- 
cape from those dreary waters, over which no bird 
flew, and in which it was incredible any fish swam. 

Mrs. Ellison, with her foot comfortably and not 
ungracefully supported on a stool, was in so little 
pain as to be looking from time to time at one of 


74 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


the guide-books which the colonel had lavished upon 
his party, and which she was disposed to hold to 
very strict account for any excesses of description. 

‘ k It says here that the water of the Saguenay is 
as black as ink. Do you think it is, Richard ? ” 

4k It looks so.” 

44 Well, but if you took some up in your hand? ’ 

44 Perhaps it wouldn't be as black as the best 
Maynard and Noyes, but it would be black enough 
for all practical purposes.” 

44 Maybe,” suggested Kitty, 44 the guide-book 
means the kind that is light blue at first, but 4 be- 
comes a deep black on exposure to the air,’ as the 
label says.” 

44 What do you think, Mr. Arbuton?” asked 
Mrs. Ellison with unabated anxiety. 

44 Well, really, 1 don’t know,” said Mr. Arbuton, 
who thought it a very trivial kind of talk, 44 1 can’t 
say, indeed. I haven’t taken any of it up in my 
hand.” 

44 That’s true,” said Mrs. Ellison gravely, with an 
accent of reproval for the others who had not 
thought of so simple a solution of the problem, 
44 very true.” 

The colonel looked into her face with an air of 
well-feigned alarm. 44 You don’t think the sprain 
has gone to your head, Fanny?” he asked, and 
walked away, leaving Mr. Arbuton to the ladies. 
Mrs. Ellison did not care for this or any other gibe, 
if she but served her own purposes ; and now, hav 


ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 


75 


ing made everybody laugh and given the conversa- 
tion a lively turn, she was as perfectly content as if 
she had not been herself an offering to the cause of 
cheerfulness. She was, indeed, equal to any sacri- 
fice in the enterprise she had undertaken, and would 
not only have given Kitty ail her worldly goods, 
but would have quite effaced herself to further her 
own designs upon Mr. Arbuton. She turned again 
to her guide-book, and left the young people to con- 
tinue the talk in unbroken gayety. They at once 
became serious, as most people do after a hearty 
laugh, which, if you think, seems always to have 
something strange and sad in it. But besides, Kitty 
was oppressed by the coldness that seemed perpetu- 
ally to hover in Mr. Arbuton ’s atmosphere, while 
she was interested by his fastidious good looks and 
his blameless manners and his air of a world differ- 
ent from any she had hitherto known. He was one 
of those men whose perfection makes you feel guilty 
of misdemeanor whenever they meet you, and whose 
greeting turns your honest good-day coarse and 
common ; even Kitty’s fearless ignorance and more 
than Western disregard of dignities were not proof 
against him. She had found it easy to talk with 
Mrs. March as she did with her cousin at home; 
elie liked to be frank and gay in her parley, to jest 
and to laugh and to make harmless fun, and to sen- 
timentalize in a half-earnest way ; she liked to be 
with Mr. Arbuton, but now she did not see how she 
oould take her natural tone with him. She won- 


76 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


dered at lier daring lightness at the breakfast* table 
she waited for him to say something, and he said, 
with a glance at the gray heaven that always over- 
hangs the Saguenay, that it was beginning to rain, 
and unfurled the slender silk umbrella which har- 
monized so perfectly with the London effect of his 
dress, and held it over her. Mrs. Ellison sat within 
the shelter of the projecting roof, and diligently pe- 
rused her book with her eyes, and listened to their 
talk. 

“ The great drawback to this sort of thing in 
America,” continued Mr. Arbuton, “ is that there 
is no human interest about the scenery, fine as it 
is.” 

“ Why, I don’t know,” said Kitty, “ there was 
that little settlement round the saw-mill. Can't 
you imagine any human interest in the lives of the 
people there ? It seems to me that one might make 
almost anything out of them. Suppose, for ex- 
ample, that the owner of that mill was a disap- 
pointed man who had come here to bury the wreck 
of his life in — sawdust ? ” 

“ Oh, yes ! That sort of thing ; certainly. But 
I didn’t mean that, I meant something historical. 
There is no past, no atmosphere, no traditions, you 
know.” 

“ Oh. but the Saguenay has a tradition,” said 
Kitty. ‘ You know that a party of the first ex- 
plorers left their comrades at Tadoussac, and came 
up the Saguenay three hundred years ago, and 


ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 


77 


never were seen or heard of again. I think it’s so 
in keeping with the looks of the river. The Sague- 
nay would never tell a secret.” 

“ Um ! ” uttered Mr. Arbuton, as if he were not 
quite sure that it was the Saguenay’s place to have 
a legend of this sort, and disposed to snub the 
legend because the Saguenay had it. After a little 
silence, he began to speak of famous rivers abroad. 

“ 1 suppose,” Kitty said, “ the Rhine has tradi- 
tions enough, hasn't it? ” 

“ Y es,” he answered, “ but I think the Rhine 
rather overdoes it. Y r ou can’t help feeling, you 
know, that it’s somewhat melodramatic and — com- 
mon. Have you ever seen the Rhine? ” 

u Oh, no ! This is almost the first I’ve seen of 
anything. Perhaps,” she added, demurely, yet with 
a tremor at finding herself about to make light of 
Mr. Arbuton, “ if I had had too much of tradition 
on the Rhine I should want more of it on the Sa- 
guenay.” 

“ Why, you must allow there’s a golden mean in 
everything, Miss Ellison,” said her companion with 
a lenient laugh, not feeling it disagreeable to be 
made light of by her. 

“ Yes ; and I’m afraid we’re going to find Cape 
Trinity and Cape Eternity altogether too big when 
we come to them. Don’t you think eighteen hun- 
dred feet excessively high for a feature of river 
scenery ? ” 

Mr. Arbuton really did have an objection to the 


78 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


exaggerations of nature on this continent, and se- 
cretly thought them in bad taste, but he had never 
foimulated his feeling. He was not sure but it was 
ridiculous, now that it was suggested, and yet the 
possibility was too novel to be entertained without 
suspicion. 

However, when after a while the rumor of their 

approach to the 
great objects of 
the Saguenay 
journey had 
spread among 
the passengers, 
and they began 
to assemble at 
points favorable 
for the enjoy- 
ment of the 
spectacle, he 
was glad to 
have secured 
the place he held with Miss Ellison, and a sympa- 
thetic thrill of excitement passed through his loath 
superiority. The rain ceased as they drew nearer, 
and the gray clouds that had hung so low upon the 
lulls sullenly lifted from them and let their growing 
height be seen. The captain bade his sight- seers 
look at the vast Roman profile that showed itself 
upon the rock, and then he pointed out tbe wonder- 
ful Gothic arch, the reputed doorway of an unex 



ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 79 

plored cavern, under which an upright shaft of 
stone had stood for ages statue-like, till not many 
winters ago the frost heaved it from its base, and it 
plunged headlong down through the ice into the un- 
fathomed depths below. The unvarying gloom of 
the pines was lit now by the pensive glimmer of 
birch- trees, and this gray tone gave an indescrib- 
able sentiment 
of pathos and 
of age to the 
scenery. Sud- 
denly the boat 
rounded the cor- 
ner of the three 
steps, each five 
hundred feet 
high, in which 
Cape Eternity 
climbs from the 
river, and crept 
in under the 
naked side of the awful cliff. It is sheer rock, 
springing from the black water, and stretching up- 
ward with a weary, effort-like aspect, in long im- 
pulses of stone marked by deep seams from space to 
space, till, fifteen hundred feet in air, its vast brow 
beetles forward, and frowns with a scattering fringe 
of pines. There are stains of weather and of oozing 
springs upon the front of the cliff, but it is height 
alone that seems to seize the eye, and one remera- 



80 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 



bers afterwards these details, which are indeed so 
few as not properly to enter into the effect. The 
rock fully justifies its attributive height to the eye. 


ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 


81 


which follows the upward rush of the mighty ac- 
clivity, steep after steep, till it wins the cloud-eapt 
summit, when the measureless mass seems to swing 
and sway overhead, and the nerves tremble with the 
same terror that besets him who looks downward 
from the verge of a lofty precipice. It is wholly 
grim and stern ; no touch of beauty relieves the 
austere majesty of that presence. At the foot of 
Cape Eternity the water is of unknown depth, and 
it spreads, a black expanse, in the rounding hollow 
of shores of unimaginable wildness and desolation, 
and issues again in its river’s course around the base 
of Cape trinity. This is yet loftier than the sister 
cliff, but it slopes gently backward from the stream, 
and from foot to crest it is heavily clothed with a 
forest of pines. The woods that hitherto have 
shagged the hills with a stunted and meagre 
growth, showing long stretches scarred by fire, now 
assume a stately size, and assemble themselves com- 
pactly upon the side of the mountain, setting their 
serried stems one rank above another, till the sum- 
mit is crowned with the mass of their dark green 
plumes, dense and soft and beautiful ; so that the 
spirit perturbed by the spectacle of the other cliff is 
calmed and assuaged by the serene grandeur of this 
There have been, to be sure, some human agen 
cies at work even under the shadow of Cape Eter 
nity to restore the spirit to self-possession, and per 
haps none turns from it wholly dismayed. Kitty # 
sit any rate, took heart from some works of an 


82 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


which the cliff wall displayed near the water’s edge. 
One of these was a lively fresco portrait of Lieu- 
tenant-General Sherman, with the insignia of his 
rank, and the other was an even more striking 
efiigy of General O’Neil, of the Armies of the Irish 
Republic, wearing a threatening aspect, and de- 
signed in a bold conceit of his presence there as 
conqueror of Canada in the year 1875. Mr. Arbu- 
ton was inclined to resent these intrusions upon the 
sublimity of nature, and he could not conceive, 
without disadvantage to them, how Miss Ellison 
and the colonel should accept them so cheerfully as 
part of the pleasure of the whole. As he listened 
blankly to their exchange of jests he found himself 
awful l} r beset by a temptation which one of the 
boat’s crew placed before the passengers. This was 
a bucket full of pebbles of inviting size ; and the 
man said, “ Now, see which can hit the cliff. It’s 
farther than any of you can throw, though it looks 
so near.” 

The passengers cast themselves upon the store 
of missiles, Colonel Ellison most actively among 
them. None struck the cliff, and suddenly Mr. 
Arbuton felt a blind, stupid, irresistible longing to 
try his chance. The spirit of his college days, of 
his boating and ball-playing youth, came upon 
him. He picked up a pebble, while Kitty opened 
her eyes in a stare of dumb surprise. Then he 
wheeled and threw it, and as it struck against the 
cliff with a shock that seemed to have broken all 


ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 


83 


the windows on the Back Bay, lie exulted in a 
sense of freedom the havoc caused him. It was 
as if for an instant he had rent away the ties of 
custom, thrown off the bonds of social allegiance, 
broken down and trampled upon the conventions 
which his whole life long he had held so dear and 
respectable. In that moment of frenzy he feared 
himself capable of shaking hands with the shabby 
Englishman in the Glengarry cap, or of asking the 
whole admiring company of passengers down to 
the bar. A cry of applause had broken from them 
at his achievement, and he had for the first time 
tasted the sweets of popular favor. Of course a 
revulsion must come, and it must be of a corre- 
sponding violence ; and the next moment Mr. Ar- 
buton hated them all, and most of all Colonel 
Ellison, who had been loudest in his praise. Him 
he thought for that moment everything that was 
aggressively and intrusively vulgar. But he could 
not utter these friendly impressions, nor is it so 
easy to withdraw from any concession, and he 
found it impossible to repair his broken defenses. 
Destiny had been against him from the beginning, 
and now why should he not strike hands with it 
for the brief half-day that he was to continue in 
these people’s society ? In the morning he would 
part from them forever, and in the mean time why 
should he not try to please and be pleased ? There 
might, to be sure, have been many reasons why 
he should not do this; but however the balance 


84 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


stood lie now yielded liimself passively to his fate. 
He was polite to Mrs. Ellison, he was attentive to 
Kitty, and as far as he could he entered into the 
fantastic spirit of her talk with the colonel. He 
was not a dull man ; he had quite an apt wit of 
his own, and a neat way of saying things ; but 
humor always seemed to him something not per- 
fectly well bred ; of course he helped to praise it 
in some old-established diner-out, or some vsoman 
of good fashion, whose mots it was customary to 
repeat, and he even tolerated it in books ; but he 
was at a loss with these people, who looked at life 
in so bizarre a temper, yet without airiness or pre- 
tension, nay, with a whimsical readiness to acknowl- 
edge kindred in every droll or laughable thing. 

The boat stopped at Tadoussac on her return, 
and among the spectators who came down to the 
landing was a certain very pretty, conscious-look- 
ing, silly, bridal-faced young woman, — imaginably 
the belle of the season at that forlorn watering- 
place, — who before coming onboard stood awhile 
attended by a following of those elderly imperial 
and colonial British who heavily flutter round the 
fair at such resorts. She had an air of utterly 
satisfied vanity, in which there was no harm in the 
world, and when she saw that she had fixed the 
eyes of the shoreward-gazing passengers, it ap- 
peared as if she fell into a happy trepidation too 
blissful to be passively borne ; she moistened her 
pretty red lips with her tongue, she twitched her 


ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 85 

mantle, she settled the bow at her lovely throat, 
she bridled ami tossed her graceful head. 

“ What should you do next, Kitty?” asked the 
colonel, who had been sympathetically intent upon 
all this. 

“ Oh, I think I should pat my foot,” answered 
Kitty ; and in fact the charming simpleton on 
shore, having perfected her attitude, was tapping 
the ground nervously with the toe of her adorable 
slipper. 

After the boat started, a Canadian lady of ripe 
age, yet of a vivacity not to be reconciled with the 
notion of the married state, capered briskly about 
among her somewhat stolid and indifferent friends, 
saying, “ They’re going to fire it as soon as we 
round the point ; ” and presently a dull boom, as 
of a small piece of ordnance discharged in the 
neighborhood of the hotel, struck through the gatli- 
eiing fog, and this elderly sylph clapped her hands 
and exulted: “They’ve fired it, they’ve fired it! 
and now the captain will blow the whistle in an- 
swer.” But the captain did nothing of the kind, 
and the lady, after some more girlish effervescence, 
upbraided him for an old owl and an old muff, and 
so sank into such a flat and spiritless calm that she 
was sorrowful to see. 

“ Too bad, Mr. Arbuton, isn’t it ? ” said the 
colonel ; and Mr. Arbuton listened in vague doubt 
while Kitty built up with her cousin a touching 
romance for the poor lady, supposed to have spent 


86 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


the one brilliant and successful summer of her life 
at Tadoussac, where her admirers had agreed to be- 
moan her loss in this explosion of gunpowder. They 
asked him if he did not wish the captain had 
whistled ; and “ Oh ! ” shuddered Kitty, 44 doesn’t 
it all make you feel just as if you had been doing 
it yourself?” — a question which he hardly knew 
how to answer, never having, to his knowledge, 
done a ridiculous thing in his life, much less been 
guilty of such behavior as that of the disappointed 
lady. 

At Cacouna, where the boat stopped to take on 
the horses and carriages of some home-returning 
sojourners, the pier was a labyrinth of equipages 
Of many sorts and sizes, and a herd of bright- 
hooded, gayly blanketed horses gave variety to 
the human crowd that soaked and steamed in the 
fine, slowly falling rain. A draught-horse was 
every three minutes driven into their midst with 
tedious iteration as he slowly drew baskets of coal 
up from the sloop unloading at the wharf, and each 
time they closed solidly upon his retreat as if they 
never expected to see that horse again while the 
world stood. They were idle ladies and gentle- 
men under umbrellas, Indians and habitans taking 
the rain stolidly erect or with shrugged shoulders, 
and two or three clergymen of the curate type, 
who might have stepped as they were out of any 
dull English novel. These were talking in low 
voices and putting their hands to their ears to 


ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 87 

catch the replies of the lady-passengers who hung 
upon the rail, and twaddled back as dryly as if 
there was no moisture in life. All the while the 
safety-valves hissed with the escaping steam, and 
the boat’s crew silently toiled with the grooms of 
the different horses to get the 
equipages on board. With the 
carriages it was an affair of mere 
muscle, but the horses required 
to be managed with brain. No 
sooner had one of them placed 
his fore feet on the gangway 
plank than he protested by back- 
ing up over a mass of patient Ca- 
nadians, carrying with him half 
a dozen grooms and deck-hands. 

Then his hood was drawn over 
his eyes, and he was blindly 
walked up and down the pier, 
and back to the gangway, which 
he knew as soon as he touched 
it. He pulled, he pranced, he 
shied, he did all that a bad and 
stubborn horse can do, till at last 
a groom mounted his back, a clump of deck-lianda 
tugged at his bridle, and other grooms, tenderly 
embracing him at different points, pushed, and he 
was thus conveyed on board with mingled affection 
and ignominy. None of the Canadians seemed 
amused by this ; they regarded it with serious com- 



88 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


posure as a fitting decorum, and Mr. Arbuton had 
no comment to make upon it. But at the first em- 
brace bestowed upon the horse by the grooms the 
colonel said absently, “ Ah ! long-lost brother,” and 
Kitty laughed; and as the scruples of each brute 
were successively overcome, she helped to give some 
grotesque interpretation to the various scenes of the 
melodrama, while Mr. Arbuton stood beside her, 

a n d sheltered 
her with his um- 
brella ; and a 
spice of malice 
in her heart told 
her that he 
viewed this 
drolling, and es- 
pecially her part 
in it, with grave misgiving. 
That gave the zest of transgression 
to her excess, mixed with dismay ; for the 
tricksy spirit in her was not a domineering spirit, 
but was easily abashed by the moods of others. 
She ought not to have laughed at Dick’s speeches, 
she soon told herself, much less helped him on. She 
dreadfully feared that she had done something inde- 
corous, and she was pensive and silent over it as she 
moved listlessly about after supper ; and she sat at 
last thinking in a dreary sort of perplexity on what 
had passed during the day, which seemed a long 
one. 



ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC. 


69 


Tlie shabby Englishman with his wife and sister 
were walking up and down the cabin. By and by 
they stopped, and sat down at the table, facing 
Kitty ; the elder woman, with a civil freedom, ad- 
dressed her some commonplace, and the four were 
presently in lively talk ; for Kitty had beamed upon 
the woman in return, having already longed to know 
something of them. The world was so fresh to her, 
that she could find delight in those poor singing or 
acting folk, though she had soon to own to herself 
that their talk was not very witty nor very wise, 
and that the best thing about them was their good- 
nature. The colonel sat at the end of the table 
with a newspaper ; Mrs. Ellison had gone to bed ; 
and Kitty was beginning to tire of her new ac- 
quaintance, and to wonder how she could get away 
from them, when she saw rescue in the eye of Mr. 
Arbuton as he came down the cabin. She knew 
lie was looking for her ; she saw him check himself 
with a start of recognition ; then he walked rapidly 
by the group, without glancing at them. 

“ Burr ! ” said the blond girl, drawing her blue 
knit shawl about her shoulders, “isn’t it cold?” 
and she and her friends laughed. 

“Oh dear!” thought Kitty, “I didn't suppose 
they were so rude. I’m afraid I must sav good 
night,” she added aloud, after a little, and stole 
away, the most conscience-stricken creature on that 
boat. She heard those people laugh again after she 
left them. 


IV. 


MR. ARBUTON’S INSPIRATION. 

Ttte next morning, when Mr. Arbuton awoke, 
he found a clear light upon the world that he had 
left wrapped in fog at midnight. A heavy gale 
was blowing, and the wide river was running in 
seas that made the boat stagger in her course, and 
now and then struck her bows with a force that 
sent the spray from their seething tops into the 
faces of the people on the promenade. The sun, 
out of rifts of the breaking clouds, launched broad 
splendors across the villages and farms of the level 
landscape, and the crests and hollows of the waves; 
and a certain joy of the air penetrated to the 
guarded consciousness of Mr. Arbuton. Involunta- 
rily he looked about for the people he meant to 
have nothing more to do with, that, he might appeal 
to the sympathies of one of them, at least, in his 
sense of such an admirable morning. But a great 
many passengers had come on board, during the 
night, at Murray Bay, where the brief season was 
ending, and their number hid the Ellisons from him. 
When he went to breakfast, he found some one had 
taken his seat near them, and they did not notice him 
as he passed by in search of another chair. Kitty 


MR. AEBUTON’S INSPIRATION. 


91 


and the colonel were at table alone, and they both 
wore preoccupied faces. After breakfast lie sought 
them out and asked for Mrs. Ellison, who had 
shared in most of the excitements of the day be- 
fore, helping herself about with a pretty limp, and 
who certainly had not, as her husband phrased it, 
kept .any of the meals waiting. 

“ Why,” said the colonel, “ I’m afraid her ankle’s 
wcrse this morning, and that we'll have to lie by at 
Quebec for a few days, at any rate.” 

Air. Arbuton heard this sad news with a cheerful 
aspect unaccountable in one who was concerned at 
Mrs. Ellison’s misfortune. He smiled, when he 
ought to have looked pensive, and he laughed at 
the colonel’s joke when the latter added, “ Of 
course, this is a great hardship for my cousin, who 
hates Quebec, and wants to get home to Eriecreek 
as soon as possible.” 

Kitty promised to bear her trials with firmness, 
and Mr. Arbuton said, not very consequently, as 
she thought, “ I had been planning to spend a 
few days in Quebec, myself, and I shall have the 
opportunity of inquiring about Mrs. Ellison’s con- 
valescence. In fact,” he added, turning to the 
colonel, “ I hope you’ll let me be of service to you 
m getting to a hotel.” 

And when the boat landed, Mr. Arbuton actually 
busied himself in finding a carriage and putting the 
various ElLson wraps and bags into it. Then he 
helped to support Mrs. Ellison ashore, and to lift 


92 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


her to the best place. He raised liis hat, and had 
good morning on his tongue, when the astonished 
colonel called out, “ Why, the deuce ! You're going 
to ride up with us ! ” 

Mr. Arbuton thought he had better get another 
carriage ; lie should incommode Airs. Ellison ; but 
Mrs. Ellhon protested that he would not at all ; 
and, to cut the matter short, he mounted to the 
colonel’s side. It was another stroke of fate. 

At the hotel they found a line of people reaching 
half-way down the outer steps from the inside of 
the office. 

“ Hallo ! what’s this ? ” asked the colonel of the 
last man in the queue. 

“ Oh, it’s a little procession to the hotel register ! 
We’ve been three quarters of an hour in passing a 
given point,” said the man, who was plainly a fel- 
low-citizen. 

“ And haven’t got by yet,” said the colonel, tak- 
ing to the speaker. “ Then the house is full ? ” 

“ Well, no; they haven’t begun to throw them 
out of the window.” 

44 His humor is degenerating, Dick,” said Kitty; 
and “Hadn’t you better go inside and inquire?” 
asked Airs. Ellison. It was part of the Ellison 
tiavelling joke for her thus to prompt the colonel 
in his duty. 

“ I’m glad you mentioned it, Fanny. I was just 
going to drive off in despair.” The colonel vanished 
within doors, and after long delay ca me out llushed 


MR. ARBUTON’S INSPIRATION. 


93 


but not with triumph. “ On the express condition 
that I have ladies with me, one an invalid, I am 
promised a room on the fifth floor some time during 
the day. They tell me the other hotel is crammed, 
and it’s no use to go tllere. ,, 

.Mrs. Ellison was ready to weep, and for the first 
time since her accident she harbored some bitter- 
ness against Mr. Arbuton. They all sat silent, 
and the colonel on the sidewalk silently wiped his 
brow. 

Mr. Arbuton, in the poverty of his invention, 
wondered if there was not some lodging-house 
where they could find shelter. 

“ Of course there is,” cried Mrs. Ellison, beam- 
ing upon her hero, and calling Kitty’s attention to 
his ingenuity by a pressure with her well foot. 
“Richard, we must look up a boarding-house.” 

“Do you know of any good boarding-houses ? ” 
asked the colonel of the driver, mechanically. 

“ Plenty,” answered the man. 

“ Well, drive us to twenty or thirty first-class 
ones,” commanded the colonel ; and the search be- 
gan. 

The colonel first asked prices and looked at 
rooms, and if he pronounced any apartment unsuit- 
able, Kitty was dispatched by Mrs. Ellison to view 
t and refute him. As often as she confirmed him, 
Mrs. Ellison was sure that they were both too fas- 
tid : ous, and they never turned away from a door 
but they closed the gates of paradise upon that 


94 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


afflicted lady. She began to believe that they should 
find no place whatever, when at last they stopped 
before a portal so unboarding-house-like in all out- 
ward signs, that she maintained it was of no use to 
ring, and imparted so much of her distrust to the 
colonel that, after ringing, he prefaced his demand 
for rooms with an apology for supposing that there 
were rooms to let there. Then, after looking at 
them, he returned to the carriage and reported that 
the whole affair was perfect, and that he should 
look no farther. Mrs. Ellison replied that she never 
could trust his judgment, he was so careless. Kitty 
inspected the premises, and came back in a trans- 
port that alarmed the worst fears of Mrs. Ellison. 
She was sure that they had better look farther, she 
knew there were plenty of nicer places. Even if 
the rooms were nice and the situation pleasant, she 
was certain that there must be some drawbacks which 
they did not know of yet. Whereupon her husband 
lifted her from the carriage, and bore her, without 
reply or comment of any kind, into the house. 

Throughout the search Mr. Arbuton had been 
making up his mind that he would part with his 
friends as soon as they found lodgings, give the day 
to Quebec, and take the evening train for Gorham, 
thin escaping the annoyances of a crowded hotel, 
and ending at once an acquaintance which he ought 
nevei to have let go so far. As long as the Ellisons 
were without shelter, he felt that it was due to 
himself not to abandon them. But even now that 





The garden of the Ui suline Convent. — Page 94. 








J1R. arbuton’s inspiration. 


95 


they were happily housed, had he done all that no- 
bility obliged? lie stood irresolute beside the car- 
riage. 

u Won’t you come up and see where we live?” 
asked Kitty, hospitably. 

u 1 shall be very glad,” said Mr. Arbuton. 

“ My dear fellow,” said the colonel, in the par- 
lor, “ I didn’t engage a room for you. I supposed 
you’d rather take your chances at the hotel.” 

“ Oh, I’m going away to-night.” 

“ Why, that’s a pity ! ” 

“ Yes, I’ve no fancy for a cot-bed in the hotel 
parlor. But I don’t quite like to leave you here, 
after bringing this calamity upon you.” 

“ Oh, don’t mention that ! I was the only one to 
blame. We shall get on splendidly here.” 

Mr. Arbuton suffered a vague disappointment. 
At the bottom of his heart was a formless hope 
that he might in some way be necessary to the El- 
lisons in their adversity ; or if not that, then that 
something might entangle him further and compel 
his stay. But they seemed quite equal in them- 
selves to the situation ; they were in far more com- 
fortable quarters than they could have hoped for, 
and plainly should want for nothing; Fortune put 
on a smiling face, and bade him go free of them. 
He fancied it a mocking smile, though, as he stood 
an instant silently weighing one thing against an- 
other. The colonel was patiently waiting his mo- 
tion ; Mrs. Ellison sat watching him from the sofa ; 


96 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


Kitty moved about the room with averted face, • 
a pretty domestic presence, a household priestess 
ordering the temporary Penates. Mr. Arbuton 
opened his lips to say farewell, but a god spoke 
through them, — inconsequently, as the gods for 
the most part do, — saying, “Besides, I suppose 
you’ve got all the rooms here.” 

“ Oh, as to that I don’t know,” answered the 
colonel, not recognizing the language of inspiration, 
“ let’s ask.” Kitty knocked a photograph -book off 
the table, and Mrs. Ellison said, “ Why, Kitty ! ” 
But nothing more was spoken till the landlady 
came. She had another room, but doubted if it 
would answer. It was in the attic, and was a back 
room, though it had a pleasant outlook. Mr. Ar- 
buton had no doubt that it would do very well for 
the day or two he was going to stay, and took it 
hastily, without going to look at it. He had his 
valise carried up at once, and then he went to the 
post-ollice to see if he had any letters, offering to 
ask also for Colonel Ellison. 

Kitty stole off to explore the chamber given her 
at the repr of the house ; that is to say, she 
opened the window looking out on what their host- 
ess told her was the garden of the Ursuline Con- 
vent, and stood there in a mute transport. A 
black cross rose in the midst, and all about this 
wandered the paths and alleys of the garden, 
through clumps of lilac-bushes and among the 
spires of hollyhocks. The grounds were enclosed 


MR. ARBUTON’S INSPIRATION. 


97 


by high walls in part, and in part by the group of 
the convent edifices, built of gray stone, high 
gabled, and topped by dormer-windowed steep 
roofs of tin, which, under the high morning sun, 
lay an expanse of keenest splendor, while many a 
grateful shadow dappled the full-foliaged garden 
below. Two slim, tali poplars stood against the 
gable of the chapel, and shot their tops above its 
roof, and under a porch near them two nuns sat 
motionless in the sun, black-robed, with black veils 
falling over their shoulders, and their white faces 
lost in the white linen that draped them from 
breast to crown. Their hands lay quiet in their 
laps, and they seemed unconscious of the other 
nuns walking in the garden-paths with little chil- 
dren, their pupils, and answering their laughter 
from time to time with voices as simple and inno- 
cent as their own. Kitty looked down upon them 
all with a swelling heart. They were but figures in 
a beautiful picture of something old and poetical; 
but she loved them, and pitied them, and was most 
happy in them, the same as if they had been real. 
It could not be that they and she were in the same 
world : she must be dreaming over a book in 
Charley’s room at Eriecreek. She shaded her eyes 
for a better look, when the noonday gun boomed 
from the citadel ; the bell upon the chapel jangled 
harshly, and those strange maskers, those quaint 
black birds with white breasts and faces, flocked in- 
doors. At the same time a small dog under her 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE 


• 

window howled dolorously at the jangling of the 
bell ; and Kitty, with an impartial joy, turned from 
the pensive romance of the convent garden to the 
mild comedy of the scene to which his woful note 
attracted her. When he had uttered his anguish, 
he relapsed into the quietest small French dog that 
ever was, and lay down near a large, tranquil cat, 
whom neither the bell nor he had been able to stir 
from her slumbers in the sun ; a peasant-like old 
man kept on sawing wood, and a little child stood 
still amidst the larkspurs and marigolds of a tiny 
garden, while over the flower-pots on the low wiri- 
dow-sill of the neighboring house to which it be- 
longed, a young, motherly face gazed peacefully out. 
The great extent of the convent grounds had left 
this poor garden scarce breathing-space for its 
humble blooms ; with the low paling fence that 
separated it from the adjoining house-yards it looked 
like a toy-garden or the background of a puppet- 
show, and in its way it was as quaintly unreal to 
the young girl as the nunnery itself. 

When she saw it first, the city’s walls and otliei 
warlike ostentations had taken her imagination with 
the historic grandeur of Quebec ; but the fasci- 
nation deepened now that she was admitted, as it 
were, to the religious heart and the domestic privacy 
of the famous old town. She was romantic, as most 
good young girls are ; and she had the same pleas- 
ure in the strangeness of the things about her as 
she would have felt in the keeping of a charming 


MR. ARBUTON’S INSPIRATION. 


99 


story. To Fanny’s “ Well, Kitty, I suppose all this 
just suits you,” when she had returned to the little 
parlor where the sufferer lay, she answered with a 
sigh of irrepressible content, “ Oh yes ! could any- 
thing be more beautiful ? ” and her enraptured eye 
dwelt upon the low ceilings, the deep, wide chim- 
neys eloquent of the mighty fires with which they 
must roar in winter, the French windows with their 
curious and clumsy fastenings, and every little de- 
tail that made the place alien and precious. 

Fanny broke into a laugh at the visionary absence 
in her face. 

“Do you think the place is good enough for your 
hero and heroine ?” asked she, slyly ; for Kitty had 
one of those family reputes, so hard to survive, for 
childish attempts of her own in the world of fiction 
where so great part of her life had been passed ; and 
]\J rs. Ellison, who was as unliterary a soul as ever 
breathed, admired her with the heartiness which 
unimaginative people often feel for their idealizing 
friends, and believed that she was always deep in 
the mysteries of some plot. 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” Kitty answered with a little 
color, “ about heroes and heroines ; but I’d like to 
live here, myself. Yes,” she continued, rather to 
herself than to her listener, “ I do believe this is 
what I was made for. I’ve always wanted to live 
amongst old things, in a stone house with dormer- 
windows. Why, there isn’t a single dormer-window 
in Eriercreek, nor even a brick house, let alone a 


100 , JHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 

stone one. Oh yes, indeed ! I was meant for an old 
country.” 

“ Well, then, Kitty, I don’t see what you’re to 
do but to marry East and live East ; or else find 
a rich husband, and get him to take you to Europe 
to live.” 

“ Yes ; or get him to come and live in Quebec. 
That’s all I’d ask, and he needn’t be a very rich 
man, for that.” 

“ Why, you poor child, what sort of husband 
could you get to settle down in this dead old 
place ? ” 

“ Oh, I suppose some kind of artist or literary 
man.” 

This was not Mrs. Ellison’s notion of the kind of 
husband who was to realize for Kitty her fancy for 
life in an old country ; but she was content to let 
the matter rest for the present, and, in a serene 
thankfulness to the power that had brought two 
marriageable young creatures together beneath the 
same roof, and under her own observance, she com- 
posed herself among the sofa-cushions, from which 
she meant to conduct the campaign against Mr. 
Arbuton with relentless vigor. 

“Well,” she said, “it won’t be fair if you are 
not happy in this world, Kitty, you ask so little of 
it ; ” while Kitty turned to the window overlooking 
the street, and lost herself in the drama of the 
passing figures below. They were new, and yet 
oddly familiar, for she had long known them in the 


MR. ARBUTON'S INSPIRATION. 101 

realm of romance. The peasant- women who went 
by, in hats of felt or straw, some on foot with 
baskets, and some in their light market-carts, were 
all, in their wrinkled and crooked age or their fresh* 
faced, strong-limbed youth, her friends since child- 
hood in many a tale of France 
or Germany; and the black- 
robed priests, who mixed with 
the passers on the narrow 
wooden sidewalk, and now and 
then courteously gave way, or 
lifted their wide-rimmed hats in 
a grave, smiling salutation, were 
more recent acquaintances, but 
not less intimate. They were 
out of old romances about Italy 
and Spain, in which she was 
very learned ; and this butcher’s 
boy, tilting along through the 
crowd with a half-staggering 
run, was from any one of Dick- 
ens's stones, and she divined 
that the four-armed wooden 
trough on his shoulder was the butcher’s tray, which 
figures in every novelist’s description of a London 
street-crowd. There were many other types, as 
French mothers of families with market-baskets on 
their arms; very pretty French school-girls with 
books under their arms ; wild-looking country boys 
with red raspberries in birch-bark measures; and 



102 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 



quiet gliding nuns with white hoods and downcast 
faces : each of whom she unerringly relegated to an 
appropriate corner of her world of 
unreality. A young, mild-faced, 
spectacled Anglican curate she did 
not give a moment’s pause, but 
rushed him instantly through the 
whole series of Anthony Trollope’s 
novels, which dull books, I am 
sorry to say, she had read, and 
liked, every 
one ; and then 
she began to 
find various 
people astray 
out of Thack- 
eray. The trig 
corporal, with 
the little visor- 
less cap worn so jauntily, the 
light stick carried in one hand, 
and the broad-sealed official doc- 
ument in the other, had also, in 
his breast-pocket, one of those 
brief, infrequent missives which 
Lieutenant Osborne used to send 
to poor Amelia; a tall, awkward 
officer did duty for Major Dob 
bin ; and when a very pretty lady driving a pony 
carriage, with a footman in livery on the little perch 
behind her, drew rein beside the pavement, and a 



MR. ARBUTON’S INSPIRATION. 


103 


handsome young captain in a splendid uniform sa- 
luted her and began talking with her in a languid, 
affected way, it was Osborne recreant to the thought 
of his betrothed, one of whose tender letters he kept 
twirling in his fingers while he talked. 

Most of the people whom she saw passing had 
letters or papers, and, in fact, they were coming 
from the post-office, where the noonday mails had 
just been opened. So she went on turning sub- 
stance into shadow, — unless, indeed, flesh and 
blood is the illusion, — and, as I am bound to own, 
catching at very slight pretexts in many cases for 
the exercise of her sorcery, when her eye fell upon 
a gentleman at a little distance. At the same mo- 
ment he raised his eyes from a letter at which he 
had been glancing, and ran them along the row of 
houses opposite, till they rested on the window at 
which she stood. Then he smiled and lifted his 
hat, and, with a start, she recognized Mr. Arbuton, 
while a certain chill struck to her heart through the 
tumult she felt there. Till he saw her there had 
been such a cold reserve and hauteur in his bearing, 
that the trepidation which she had felt about him 
at times, the day before, and which had worn quite 
away under the events of the morning, was renewed 
again, and the aspect in which he had been so strange 
that she did not know him, seemed the only one that 
he had ever worn. This effect lasted till Mr. Arbu- 
ton could find his way to her, and place in her eagei 
hand a letter from the girls and Dr. Ellison. She 
forgot it then, and vanished till she read her letter. 


y. 


MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 

The first care of Colonel Ellison had been to call 
a doctor, and to know the worst about the sprained 
ankle, upon which his plans had fallen lame ; and 
the worst was that it was not a bad sprain, but Mrs. 
Ellison, having been careless of it the day before, 
had aggravated the hurt, and she must now have 
that perfect rest, which physicians prescribe so reck- 
lessly of other interests and duties, for a week at 
least, and possibly two cr three. 

The colonel was still too much a soldier to be im- 
patient at the doctor’s order, but he was of far too 
active a temper to be quiet under it. He therefore 
proposed to himself nothing less than the capture 
of Quebec in an historical sense, and even before 
dinner he began to prepare for the campaign. He 
sallied forth, and descended upon the bookstores 
wherever he found them lurking, in whatsoever ie- 
cess of the Upper or Lower Town, and returned 
home laden with guide-books to Quebec, and mono- 
graphs upon episodes of local history, such as are 
produced in great quantity by the semi-clerical lit- 
erary taste of out-of-the-way Catholic capitals. The 
colonel (who had gone actively into business, aftei 


MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 105 

leaving the army, at the close of the war) had 
always a newspaper somewhere about him, but he 
was not a reader of many books. Of the volumes 
in the doctor’s library, he had never in former days 
willingly opened any but the plays of Shakespeare, 
and Don Quixote, long passages of which he knew 
ty heart. He had sometimes attempted other 
books, but for the most of Kitty’s favorite authors 
he professed as frank a contempt as for the Mound- 
Builders themselves. He had read one book of 
travel, namely, “ The Innocents Abroad,” which he 
held to be so good a book that he need never 
read anything else about the countries of which it 
treated. When he brought in this extraordinary 
collection of pamphlets, both Kitty and Fanny 
knew what to expect ; for the colonel was as ready 
to receive literature at second-hand as to avoid its 
original sources. He had in this way picked up a 
great deal of useful knowledge, and he was famous 
for clipping from newspapers scraps of instructive 
fact, all of which he relentlessly remembered. He 
had already a fair outline of the local history in his 
mind, and this had been deepened and freshened by 
Dr. Ellison’s recent talk of his historical studies. 
Moreover, he had secured in the course of the pres- 
ent journey, from his wife’s and cousin’s reading of 
divers guide-books, a new store of names and dates, 
which he desired to attach to the proper localities 
witl their help. 

“ Light reading for leisure hours, Fanny,” said 


106 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


Kitty, looking askance at tlie colonel’s literature as 
she sat down near her cousin after dinner. 

“ Yes ; and you start fair, ladies. Start with 
Jacques Cartier, ancient mariner of Dieppe, in the 
year 1535. No favoritism in this investigation ; no 
bringing forward of Champlain or Montcalm pre- 
maturely ; no running off on subsequent conquests 
or other side-issues. Stick to the discovery, and 
the names of Jacques Cartier and Donnacona. 
Come, do something for an honest living.” 

“Who was Donnacona?” demanded Mrs. Elli- 
son, with indifference. 

“ That is just what these fascinating little vol- 
umes will tell us. Kitty, read something to your 
suffering cousins about Donnacona, — he sounds un- 
commonly like an Irishman,” answered the colonel, 
establishing himself in an easy-chair; and Kitty 
picked up a small sketch of the history of Quebec, 
and, opening it, fell into the trance which came 
upon her at the touch of a book, and read on for 
some pages to herself. 

“Well, upon my word,” said the colonel, “I 
might as well be reading about Donnacona myself, 
for any comfort I get.” 

“ Oh, Dick, I forgot. I was just looking. Now 
I’m really going to commence.” 

“ No, not yet,” cried Mrs. Ellison, rising on her 
elbow. “ Where is Mr. Arbuton ? ” 

“What has he to do with Donnacona, my 
'iear?” 


MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 107 

44 Everything. You know he’s stayed on our ac- 
count, and I never heard of anything so impolite, 
so inhospitable, as offering to read without him. 
Go and call him, Richard, do.” 

44 Oh, no,” pleaded Kitty, 44 he won’t care about it. 
Don’t call, him, Dick.” 

44 Why, Kitty, I’m surprised at you ! When you 
read so beautifully ! You needn’t be ashamed, I’m 

sure.” 

44 I’m not ashamed ; but, at the same time, I 
don’t want to read to him.”- 

44 Well, call him any way, colonel. He’s in his 
room.” 

44 If you do,” said Kitty, with superfluous dig- 
nity, 44 1 must go away.” 

44 Very well, Kitty, just as you please. Only I 
want Richard to witness that I’m not to blame if 
Mr. Arbuton thinks us unfeeling or neglectful.” 

44 Oh, if he doesn’t say what he thinks, it’ll make 
no difference.” 

44 It seems to me that this is a good deal of fuss 
to make about one human being, a mere passing 
man and brother of a day, isn’t it?” said the 
( olonel. 44 Go on with Donnacona, do.” 

There came a knock at the door. Kitty leaped 
nervously to her feet, and fled out of the room. 
But it was only the little French serving-maid upon 
some errand which she quickly dispatched. 

44 Well, now what do you think?” asked Mrs. 
Ellison. 


L08 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


“ Why, I think you’ve a surprising knowledge of 
French for one who studied it at school. Do you 
uppose she understood you ? ” 

“ Oh, nonsense ! You know I mean Kitty and 
Her very queer behavior. Richard, if ycu moon at 
me in that stupid way,” she continued, “I shall cer- 
tainly end in an insane asylum. Can’t you see 
what’s under your very nose ? ” 

“ Yes, I can, Fanny,” answered the colonel, “if 
anything’s there. But I give you my word, I don’t 
know any more than millions yet unborn what 
you’re driving at.” The colonel took up the book 
which Kitty had thrown down, and went to his room 
to try to read up Donnacona for himself, while his 
wife penitently turned to a pamphlet in French, 
which he had bought with the others. “ After all,” 
she thought, “ men will be men ; ” and seemed not 
to find the fact wholly wanting in consolation. 

A few minutes after there was a murmur of voices 
in the entry without, at a window looking upon the 
convent garden, where it happened to Mr. Arbuton, 
descending from his attic chamber, to find Kitty 
standing, a pretty shape against the reflected light 
of the convent roofs, and amidst a little greenery of 
house-plants, tall geraniums, an overarching ivy, 
some delicate roses. She had paused there, on her 
way from Fanny’s to her own room, and was look- 
ing into the garden, where a pair of silent nuns 
were pacing up and down the paths, turning now 
their backs with the heavy sable coiffure sweeping 


MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 109 

their black robes, and now their still, mask-like 
faces, set in that stiff framework of white linen. 
Sometimes they came so near that she could distin- 
guish their features, and imagine an expression that 
she should know if she saw them again ; and while 
she stood self-forgetfully feigning a character for 
each of them, Mr. Arbuton spoke to her and took 
his place at her side. 

“ W e’re remarkably favored in having this bit of 
opera under our windows, Miss Ellison,” he said, 
and smiled as Kitty answered, “ Oh, is it really like 
an opera ? I never saw one, but I could imagine it 
must be beautiful,” and they both looked on in 
silence a moment, while the nuns moved, shadow- 
like, out of the garden, and left it empty. 

Then Mr. Arbuton said something to which 
Kitty answered simply, “I’ll see if my cousin 
doesn’t want me,” and presently stood beside Mrs. 
Ellison’s sofa, a little conscious in color. “ Fanny, 
Mr. Arbuton has asked me to go and see the cathe- 
dral with him. Do you think it would be right ? ” 

Mrs. Ellison’s triumphant heart rose to her lips. 
“ Why, you dear, particular, innocent little goose,” 
she cried, flinging her arms about Kitty, and kissing 
her till the young girl blushed again ; “ of course it 
would ! Go ! You mustn’t stay mewed up in here. 
I sha’n’t be able to go about with you ; and if I 
ean judge by the colonel’s breathing, as he calls it, 
from the room in there, he won’t, at present. But 
the idea of your having a question of propriety I ” 


110 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


And indeed it was the first time Kitty had ever had 
such a thing, and the remembrance of it put a kind 
of restraint upon her, as she strolled demurely be- 
side Mr. Arbuton towards the cathedral. 

“ You must be guide,” said he, “ for this is my 
first day in Quebec, you know, and you are an old 
inhabitant in comparison.” 

“ I’ll show the way,” she answered, “ if you’ll 
interpret the sights. I think I must be stranger to 
them than you, in spite of my long residence. 
Sometimes I’m afraid that I do only fancy I enjoy 
these things, as Mrs. March said, for I’ve no Euro- 
pean experiences to contrast them with. I know 
that it seems very delightful, though, and quite like 
what I- should expect in Europe.” 

“ You’d expect very little of Europe, then, in 
most things ; though there’s no disputing that it’s a 
very pretty illusion of the Old World.” 

A few steps had brought them into the market- 
square in front of the cathedral, where a little be- 
lated traffic still lingered in the few old peasant- 
women hovering over baskets of such fruits and 
vegetables as had long been out of season in the 
States, and the housekeepers and serving-maids 
cheapening these wares. A sentry moved mechan- 
ically up and down before the high portal of the 
Jesuit Barracks, over the arch of which were still 
the letters I. H. S. carved long ago upon the key- 
stone ; and the ancient edifice itself, with its yellow 
stucco front and its grated windows, had every right 


MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. Ill 

to be a monastery turned barracks in France or 
Italy. A row of quaint stone houses — inns and 
shops — formed the upper side of the Square ; while 
the modern buildings of the Rue Fabrique on the 
lower side might serve very well for that show of 
improvement which deepens the 
sentiment of the neighboring an- 
tiquity and decay in Latin towns. 

As for the cathedral, which faced 
the convent from across the 
Square, it was as cold and torpid 
a bit of Renaissance as could be 
found in Rome itself. A red- 
coated soldier or two passed 
through the Square ; three or four 
neat little French policemen 
lounged about in blue uniforms 
and flaring havelocks ; some wal- 
nut-faced, blue-eyed old citizens 
and peasants sat upon the thresh- 
olds of the row of old houses, and 
gazed dreamily through the smoke 
of their pipes at the slight stir and 
glitter of shopping about the fine stores of the Rue 
Fabrique. An air of serene disoccupation pervaded 
the place, with which the occasional riot of the driv- 
ers of the long row of calashes and carriages in front 
of the cathedral did not discord. Whenever a stray 
American wandered into the Square, there was a 
wild flight of these drivers towards him, and his 



112 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


person was lost to sight amidst their pantomime. 
They did not try to underbid each other, and they 
were perfectly good-humored ; as soon as he had 
made his choice, the rejected multitude returned to 
their places on the curbstone, pursuing the success- 
ful aspirant with inscrutable jokes as he drove off, 
while the horses went on munching the contents of 
their leathern head-bags, and tossing them into the 
air to shake down the lurking grains of corn. 

“ It is like Europe ; your friends were right,” 
said Mr. Arbuton as they escaped into the cathe- 
dral from one of these friendly onsets. “ It’s quite 
the atmosphere of foreign travel, and you ought to 
be able to realize the feelings of a tourist.” 

A priest was saying mass at one of the side- 
altars, assisted by acolytes in their every-day 
clothes ; and outside of the railing a market-woman, 
with a basket of choke-cherries, knelt among a few 
other poor people. Presently a young English 
couple came in, he with a dashing India scarf about 
his hat, and she very stylishly dressed, who also 
made their genuflections with the rest, and then sat 
down and dropped their heads in prayer. 

“ This is like enough Europe, too,” murmured 
Mr. Arbuton. “ It’s very good North Italy ; or 
South, for the matter of that.” 

“ Oh, is it ? ” answered Kitty, joyously. “ I 
thought it must be ! ” And she added, in that 
trustful way of hers, “ It’s all very familiar ; but 
then it seems to me on this journey that I’ve seen 


MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 113 


a great many things that I know I’ve only read of 
before ; ” and so followed Mr. Arhuton in his tour 
of the pictures. 

She was as ignorant of art as any Roman or 
Florentine girl whose life has been passed in the 
midst of it; and she believed these 
mighty fine pictures, and was 
puzzled by Mr. Arbuton’s 
behavior towards them, who 
was too little imaginative or 



too conscientious to make merit for them out of the 
things they suggested. He treated the poor altar- 
pieces of the Quebec cathedral with the same harsh 
indifference he would have shown to the second-rate 
paintings of a European gallery; doubted the Van- 
dyck, and cared nothing for the Conception, “ in 
8 


114 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


the style of Le Brim,” over the high-altar, though 
it had the historical interest of hhving survived 
that bombardment of 1759 which destroyed the 
church. 

Kitty innocently singled out the worst picture in 
the place as her favorite, and then was piqued, and 
presently frightened, at his cold reluctance about it. 
He made her feel that it was very bad, and that 
she shared its inferiority, though he said nothing to 
that effect. She learned the shame of not being a 
connoisseur in a connoisseur’s company, and she 
perceived more painfully than ever before that a 
Bostonian, who had been much in Europe, might 
be very uncomfortable to the simple, untravelled 
American. Yet, she reminded herself, the Marches 
had been in Europe, and they were Bostonians also ; 
and they did not go about putting everything under 
foot; they seemed to care for everything they saw, 
and to have a friendly jest, if not praises, for it. 
She liked that ; she would have been well enough 
pleased to have Mr. Arbuton laugh outright at her 
picture, and she could have joined him in it. But 
the look, however flattered into an air of polite 
question at last, which he had bent upon her, 
seemed to outlaw her and condemn her taste in 
everything. As they passed out of the cathedral, 
she would rather have gone home than continued 
the walk as he begged her, if she were not tired, to 
do ; but this would have been flight, and she was 


MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 115 

not a coward. So they sauntered down the Rue 
Fabrique, and turned into Palace Street. As they 
went by the door of Hotel Musty, her pleasant 
friends came again into her mind, and she said, 
“ This is where we stayed last week, with Mr. and 
Mrs. March.” 

u Those Boston people ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Do you know where they live in Boston ? ” 

“ Why, we have their address ; but I can’t think 
of it. I believe somewhere in the southern part of 
the city ” — 

“ The South End ? ” 

Oh yes, that’s it. Have you ever heard of 
‘ihem? ” 

“ No.” 

“ I thought perhaps you might have known Mr. 
March. He’s in the insurance business ” — 

“ Oh no ! No, I don’t know him,” said Mr. Ar- 
buton, eagerly. Kitty wondered if there could be 
anything wrong with the business repute of Mr. 
March, but dismissed the thought as unworthy ; 
and having perceived that her friends were snubbed, 
she said bravely, that they were the most delightful 
people she had ever seen, and she was sorry that 
they were not still in Quebec. He shared her re- 
gret tacitly, if at all, and they walked in silence 
to the gate, whence they strolled down the winding 
street outside the wall into the Lower Town. But 
it was not a pleasant ramble for Kitty : she was in 


116 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


a dim dread of hitherto unseen and unimagined 
trespasses against good taste, not only in pictures 
and people, but in all life, which, from having been 
a very smiling prospect when she set out with Mr. 
Arbuton, had suddenly become a narrow pathway, 
in which one must pick one’s way with more regard 
to each step than any general end. All this was as 
obscure and uncertain as the intimations which 
had produced it, and which, in words, had really 
amounted to nothing. But she felt more and more 
that in her companion there was something wholly 
alien to the influences which had shaped her ; and 
though she could not know how much, she was sure 
of enough to make her dreary in his presence. 

They wandered through the quaintness and noise- 
less bustle of the Lower Town thoroughfares, and 
came by and by to that old church, the oldest in 
Quebec, which was built near two hundred years 
ago, in fulfillment of a vow made at the repulse of 
Sir William Phipps’s attack upon the city, and 
further famed for the prophecy of a nun, that this 
church should be ruined by the fire in which a suc- 
cessful attempt of the English was yet to involve 
the Lower Town. A painting, which represented 
the vision of the nun, perished in the conflagration 
which verified it, in 1759 ; but the walls of the an- 
cient structure remain to witness this singular piece 
of history, which Kitty now glanced at furtively in 
one of the colonel’s guide-books ; since her ill-for- 
tune with the picture in the cathedral, she had not 
openly cared for anything. 


MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 117 

At one side of the church there was a booth for 
the sale of crockery and tin ware ; and there was 
an every-day cheerfulness of small business in the 
shops and tented stands about the square on which 
the church faced, and through which there was con- 
tinual passing of heavy burdens from the port, 
swift calashes, and slow, country-paced market- 
carts. 

Mr. Arbuton made no motion to enter the 
church, and Kitty would not hint the curiosity she 
felt to see the interior ; and while they lingered a 
moment, the door opened, and a peasant came out 
with a little coffin in his arms. His eyes were dim 
and his face wet with weeping, and he bore Ll i • * lit- 
tle coffin tenderly, as if his caress might reach the 
dead child within. Behind him she came who must 
be the mother, her face deeply hidden in her veil. 
Beside the pavement waited a shabby calash, with 
a driver half asleep on his perch ; and the man, still 
clasping his precious burden, clambered into the ve- 
hicle, and laid it upon his knees, while the woman 
groped, through her tears and veil, for the step. 
Kitty and her companion had moved reverently 
aside ; but now Mr. Arbuton came forward, and 
helped the woman to her place. She gave him a 
hoarse, sad “ Merci ! ” and spread a fold of her 
shawl fondly over the end of the little coffin ; the 
drowsy driver whipped up his beast, and the calash 
Jolted away. 

Kitty cast a grateful glance upon Mr. Arbuton, 


118 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


as they now entered the church, by a common im- 
pulse. On their way towards the high-altar they 
passed the rude black bier, with the tallow candles 
yet smoking in their black wooden candlesticks. A 
few worshippers were dropped here and there in the 
vacant seats, and at a principal side-altar knelt a 
poor woman praying before a wooden effigy of the 
dead Christ that lay in a glass case under the altar. 
The image was of life-size, and was painted to rep- 
resent life, or rather death, with false hair and 
beard, and with the muslin drapery managed to 
expose the stigmata : it was stretched upon a bed 
strewn with artificial flowers ; and it was dreadful. 
But the poor soul at her devotions there prayed to 
it in an ecstacy of supplication, .flinging her arms 
asunder with imploring gesture, clasping her hands 
and bowing her head upon them, while her person 
swayed from side to side in the abandon of her 
prayer. Who could she be, and what was her 
mighty need of blessing or forgiveness? As her 
wont was, Kitty threw her own soul into the imag- 
ined case of the suppliant, the tragedy of her desire 
or sorrow. Yet, like all who suffer sympathetically, 
she was not without consolations unknown to the 
principal; and the waning afternoon, as it lit up 
the conventional ugliness of the old church, and the 
paraphernalia of its worship, relieved her emotional 
self-abandon with a remote sense of content, so that 
it may have been a jealousy for the integrity of her 
own reverie, as well as a feeling for the poor woman. 



Her person swayed from side to side. — Page 118. 


























MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 119 

that made her tremble lest Mr. Arbuton should in 
some way disparage the spectacle. I suppose that 
her interest in it was more an aesthetic than a spir- 
itual one ; it embodied to her sight many a scene of 
penitence that had played before her fancy, and I 
do not know but she would have been willing to 
have the suppliant guilty of some dreadful misdeed, 
rather than eating meat last Friday, which was 
probably her sin. However it was, the ancient 
crone before that ghastly idol was precious to her, 
and it seemed too great a favor, when at last the 
suppliant wiped her eyes, rose trembling from her 
knees, and, approaching Kitty, stretched towards 
her a shaking palm for charity. 

It was a touch that transfigured all, and gave 
even Mr. Arbuton’s neutrality a light of ideal char- 
acter. He bestowed the alms craved of him in 
turn, he did not repulse the beldame’s blessing ; 
and Kitty, who was already moved by his kindness 
to that poor mourner at the door, forgot that the 
earlier part of their walk had been so miserable, and 
climbed back to the Upper Town through the Pres- 
cott Gate in greater gayety than she had yet known 
that day in his company. I think he had not done 
much to make her cheerful ; but it is one of the ad- 
vantages of a temperament like his, that very little 
is expected of it, and that it can more easily than 
any other make the human heart glad ; at the least 
Boftening in it, the soul frolics with a craven light- 
aomeness. For this reason Kitty was able to enjoy 


120 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


with novel satisfaction the picturesqueness of Moun- 
tain Street, and they both admired the huge shoul- 
der of rock near the gate, with its poplars atop, and 
the battery at the brink, with the muzzles of the 
guns thrust forward against the sky. She could not 
move him to her pleasure in the grotesqueness of 
the circus-bills plastered half-way up the rock ; but 
he tolerated the levity with which she commented 
on them, and her light sallies upon passing things, 
and he said nothing to prevent her reaching home 
in serene satisfaction. 

“Well, Kitty,” said the tenant of the sofa, as 
Kitty and the colonel drew up to the table on which 
the tea was laid at the sofa-side, “ you’ve had a nice 
walk, haven’t you ? ” 

“ Oh yes, very nice. That is, the first part of it 
wasn’t very nice ; but after a while we reached an 
old church in the Lower Town, — which was very 
interesting, — and then we appeared to cheer up 
and take a new start.” 

“ Well,” asked the colonel, “ what did you find so 
interesting at that old church ? ” 

“ Why, there was a baby’3 funeral ; and an old 
woman, perfectly crushed by some trouble or other, 
praying before an altar, and ” — 

“ It seems to take very little to cheer you up,” 
said the colonel. “ All you ask of your fellow- 
beings is a heart-breaking bereavement and a ie- 
ligious agony, and you are lively at once. Some 
people might require human sacrifices, but you 
don’t.” 


MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 121 

Kitty looked at her cousin a moment with vague 
amaze. The grossness of the absurdity flashed 
upon her, and she felt as if another touch must 
bring the tears. She said nothing ; but Mrs. Elli- 
son, who saw only that she was cut off from her 
heart’s desire of gossip, came to the rescue. 

“ Don’t answer a word, Kitty, not a single word ; 
I never heard anything more insulting from one 
cousin to another ; and I should say it, if I was 
brought into a court of justice.” 

A sudden burst of laughter from Kitty, who hid 
her conscious face in her hands, interrupted Mrs. 
Ellison’s defense. 

“ Well,” said Mrs. Ellison, piqued at her de- 
sertion, “ I hope you understand yourselves. I 
don’t.” This was Mrs. Ellison’s attitude towards 
her husband’s whole family, who on their part 
never had been able to account for the colonel’s 
choice except as a joke, and sometimes questioned if 
he had not perhaps carried the joke too far; though 
they loved her too, for a kind of passionate gener- 
osity and sublime, inconsequent unselfishness about 
her. 

“ What I want to know, now” said the colonel, 
as soon as Kitty would let him, “ and I’ll try to 
put it as politely as I can, is simply this : What 
made the first part of your walk so disagreeable ? 
You didn’t see a wedding party i or a child rescued 
from a horrible death, or a man saved from drown- 
*ng, or anything of that kind, did you ? ” 


122 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


But the colonel would have done better not to 
Bay anything. His wife was made peevish by his 
persistence, and the loss of the harmless pleasure 
upon which she had counted in the history of 
Kitty’s walk with Mr. Arbuton. Kitty herself 
would not laugh again ; in fact she grew serious 
and thoughtful, and presently took up a book, and 
after that went to her own room, where she stood 
awhile at her window, and looked out on the 
garden of the Ursulines. The moon hung full orb 
in the stainless heaven, and deepened the mystery 
of the paths and trees, and lit the silvery roofs and 
chimneys of the convent with tender effulgence. A 
wandering odor of leaf and flower stole up from the 
garden, but she perceived the sweetness, like the 
splendor, with veiled senses. She was turning 
over in her thought the incidents of her walk, and 
trying to make out if anything had really hap- 
pened, first to provoke her against Mr. Arbuton, 
and then to reconcile her to him. Had he said or 
done anything about her favorite painting (which 
she hated now), or- the Marches, to offend her ? Or 
if it had been his tone and manner, was his after- 
conduct at the old church sufficient penance ? 
What was it he had done that common humanity 
did not require ? W as he so very superior to com- 
mon humanity, that she should meekly rejoice at 
his kindness to the afflicted mother? Why need 
she have cared for his forbearance towards the rapt 
devotee ? She became aware that she was ridicu- 


MR. ARBUTON MAKES HIMSELF AGREEABLE. 123 



Ions. “ Dick was right,” she confessed, “ and I will 
not let myself be made a goose of ; ” and when the 
bugle at the citadel called the 
soldiers to rest, and the harsh 
chapel-bell bade the nuns go 
dream of heaven, she also fell 
asleep, a smile on her lips and 
a light heart in her breast. 





VI. 


A LETTER OF KITTY’S. 


Quebec, August — , 1870. 

Dear Girls, — Since tbo 
letter I wrote you a day or 
two after we got here, we 
have been going on very 
much as you might have ex- 
pected. A whole week hat 
passed, but we still bear our 
enforced leisure with forti- 
tude ; and, though Boston 
and New York are both fad- 
ing into the improbable (as far as we are concerned), 
Quebec continues inexhaustible, and I don’t be- 
grudge a moment of the time we are giving it. 

Fanny still keeps her sofa ; the first enthusiasm 
of her affliction has worn away, and she has noth- 
ing to sustain her now but planning our expeditions 
about the city. She has got the map and the his- 
toiy of Quebec by heart, and she holds us to the 
literal fulfillment of her instructions. On this ac- 
count, she often has to send Dick and me out 
together when she would like to keep him with her, 
for she won’t trust either of us alone, and when we 



A LETTER OF KITTY’S. 


125 


come back she examines us separately to see whether 
we have skipped anything. This makes us faithful 
in the smallest things. She says she is determined 
that Uncle Jack shall have a full and circumstantial 
report from me of all that he wants to know about 
the celebrated places here, and I really think he 
will, if I go on, or am goaded on, in this way. It’s 
pure devotion to the cayse in Fanny, for you know 
she doesn’t care for such things herself, and has no 
pleasure in it but carrying a point. Her chief con- 
solation under her trial of keeping still is to see how 
I look in her different dresses. She sighs over me 
as I appear in a new garment, and says, Oh, if she 
only had the dressing of me ! Then she gets up 
and limps and hops across the room to where I 
stand before the glass, and puts a pin here and a 
ribbon there, and gives my hair (which she has 
dressed herself) a little dab, to make it lie differ- 
ently, and then scrambles back to her sofa, and 
knocks her lame ankle against something, and lies 
there groaning and enjoying herself like a martyr. 
On days when she thinks she is never going to get 
well, she says she doesn’t know why she doesn’t give 
me her things at once and be done with it ; and on 
days when she thinks she is going to get well right 
away, she says she will have me one made some- # 
thing like whatever dress I have got on, as soon as 
she’s home. Then up she’ll jump again for the 
exact measure, and tell me the history of every 
stitch, and how she’ll have it altered just the least 


126 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


grain, and differently trimmed to suit my com- 
plexion better ; and ends by having promised to get 
me something not in the least like it. You have 
some idea already of what Fanny is ; and all you 
have got to do is to multiply it by about fifty thou- 
sand. Her sprained ankle simply intensifies her 
whole character. 

Besides helping to compose Fanny’s expedition- 
ary corps, and really exerting himself in the cause 
of Uncle Jack, as he calls it, Dick is behaving 
beautifully. Every morning, after breakfast, he 
goes over to the hotel, and looks at the arrivals 
and reads the newspapers, and though we never 
get anything out of him afterwards, we somehow 
feel informed of all that is going on. He has 
taken to smoking a clay pipe in honor of the Cana- 
dian fashion, and he wears a gay, barbaric scarf 
of Indian muslin wound round his hat and flying 
out behind ; because the Quebeckers protect them- 
selves in that way against sunstroke when the ther- 
mometer gets up among the sixties. He has also 
bought a pair of snow-shoes to be prepared for the 
other extreme of weather, in case anything else 
should happen to Fanny, and detain us into the 
winter. When he has rested from his walk to the 
hotel, we usually go out together and explore, as 
wo do also in the afternoon ; and in the evening 
we walk on Durham Terrace, — a promenade over- 
looking the river, where the whole cramped and 
crooked city goes for exercise. It’s a formal pa- 


A LETTER OF KITTY’S. 


127 


rade in the evening ; but one morning I went 
there before breakfast, for a change, and found it 
the resort of careless ease ; two or three idle boys 
were sunning themselves on the carriages of the 
big guns that stand on the Terrace, a little dog 
was barking at the chimneys of the Lowet Town, 
and an old gentleman was walking up and down 
in his dressing-gown and slippers, just as if it were 
his own front porch. He looked something like 
Uncle J ack, and I wished it had been he, — to see 
the smoke curling softly up from the Lower Town, 
the bustle about the market-place, and the ship- 
ping in the river, and the haze hanging over the 
water a little way off, and the near hills all silver, 
and the distant ones blue. 

But if we are coming to the grand and the beau- 
tiful, why, there is no direction in which you can 
look about Quebec without seeing it; and it is 
always mixed up with something so familiar and 
homelike, that my heart warms to it. The Jesuit 
Barracks are just across the street from us in the 
foreground of the most magnificent landscape ; the 
building is — think, you Eriecreeks of an hour ! — 
two hundred years old, and it looks five hundred. 
The English took it away from the Jesuits in 17G0, 
and have used it as barracks ever since ; but it isn’t 
in the least changed, so that a Jesuit missionary 
who visited it the other day said that it was as if his 
brother priests had been driven out of it the week 
before. Well, you might think so old and so his- 


128 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


toriciil a place would be putting on airs, but it takes 
as kindly to domestic life as a new frame-house, and 
I am never tired of looking over into the yard at 
the frowsy soldiers’ wives hanging out clothes, and 
the unkempt children playing among the burdocks, 
and chickens and cats, and the soldiers themselves 
carrying about the officers’ boots, or sawing wood 
and picking up chips to boil the teakettle. They 
are off dignity as well as off duty, then ; but when 
they are on both, and in full dress, they make our 
volunteers (as I remember them) seem very shabby 
and slovenly. 

Over the belfry of the Barracks, our windows 
command a view of half Quebec, with its roofs and 
spires droppiug down the slope to the Lower Town, 
where the masts of the ships in the river come ta- 
pering up among them, and then of a plain stretch- 
ing from the river in the valley to a range of moun- 
tains against the horizon, with far-off white villages 
glimmering out of their purple folds. The whole 
plain is bright with houses and harvest-fields ; and 
the distinctly divided farms — the owners cut them 
up every generation, and give each son a strip of 
the entire length — run back on either hand, from 
the straight roads bordered by poplars, while the 
highways near the city pass between lovely villas. 

But this landscape and the Jesuit Barracks, with 
all their merits, are nothing to the Ursuline Con- 
vent, just under our back windows, which I told 
you something about in my other letter. We have 


A LETTER OF KITTY’S. 


129 


been reading up its history since, and we know 
about Madame de? la Pel trie, the noble Norman 
lady who founded it in 1640. She was very rich 
and very beautiful, and a saint from the beginning, 
so that when her husband died, and her poor old 
father wanted her to marry again and not go into 
a nunnery, she didn’t mind cheating him by a sham 
marriage with a devout gentleman ; and she came 
to Canada as soon as her father was dead, with an- 
other saint, Marie de l’lncarnation, and founded 
this convent. The first building is standing yet, as 
strong as ever, though everything but the stone 
walls was burnt two centuries ago. Only a few 
years since an old ash-tree, under which the Ursu- 
lines first taught the Indian children, blew down, 
and now a large black cross marks its place. The 
modern nuns are in the garden nearly the whole 
morning long, and by night the ghosts of the former 
nuns haunt it ; and in very bright moonlight I my- 
self do a bit of Madame de la Peltrie there, and 
teach little Indian boys, who dwindle like those 
in the song, as the moon goes down. It is an en- 
chanted place, and I wish we had it in the back yard 
at Eriecreek, though I don’t think the neighbors 
would approve of the architecture. I have adopted 
two nuns for my own : one is tall and slender and 
pallid, and you can see at a glance that she broke 
the heart of a mortal lover, and knew it, when she 
became the bride of heaven ; and the other is short 
and plain and plump, and looks as comfortable and 


130 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


commonplace as life-after-dinner. When the world 
is bright I revel in the statue-like sadness of the 
beautiful nun, who never laughs or plays with the 
little girl pupils ; but when the world is dark — as 
the best of worlds will be at times for a minute or 
two — I take to the fat nun, and go in for a clumsy 
romp with the children ; and then I fancy that I 
am wiser if not better than the fair slim Ursuline. 
But whichever I am, for the time being, I am vexed 
with the other ; yet they always are together, as if 
they were counterparts. I think a nice story might 
be written about them. 

In Wolfe’s siege of Quebec this Ursuline Garden 
of ours was everywhere torn up by the falling 
bombs, and the sisters were driven out into the 
world they had forsaken forever, as Fanny has been 
reading in a little French account of the events, 
written at the time, by a nun of the General Hos- 
pital. It was there the Ursulines took what refuge 
there was ; going from their cloistered school-rooms 
and their innocent little ones to the wards of the 
hosp ; tal, filled with the wounded and dying of either 
side and echoing with their dreadful groans. What 
a sad, evil, bewildering world they had a glimpse 
of ! In the garden here, our poor Montcalm — I 
belong to the French side, please, in Quebec — was 
buried in a grave dug for him by a bursting shell. 
They have his skull now in the chaplain’s room 
of the convent, where we saw it the other day. 
They have made it comfortable in a glass box, 


A LETTER OF KITTY’S. 


131 


neatly bound with black, and covered with a white 
lace drapery, just as if it were a saints’. It was 
broken a little in taking it out of the grave ; and a 
few years ago, some English officers borrowed it to 
look at, and were horrible enough to pull out some 
of the teeth. Tell Uncle Jack the head is very 
broad above the ears, but the forehead is small. 

The chaplain also showed us a copy of an old 
painting of the first convent, Indian lodges, Madame 
de la Peltrie’s house, and Madame herself, very 
splendidly dressed, with an Indian chief before her, 
and some French cavaliers riding down an avenue 
towards her. Then he showed us some of the nuns’ 
work in albums, painted and lettered in a way to 
give me an idea of old missals. By and by he 
went into the chapel with us, and it gave such a 
queer notion of his indoors life to have him put on 
an overcoat and india-rubbers to go a few rods 
through the open air to the chapel door ; he had not 
been very well, he said. When he got in, he took 
off his hat, and put on an octagonal priest’s cap, 
and showed us everything in the kindest way — and 
his manners were exquisite. There were beautiful 
paintings sent out from France at the time of the 
Revolution ; and wood-carvings round the high- 
altar, done by Quebec artists in the beginning of 
the last century ; for he said they had a school of 
arts then at St. Anne’s, twenty miles below the 
city. Then there was an ivory crucifix, so life-like 
that you could scarcely bear to look at it. But what 


132 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


I most cared for was the tiny twinkle of a votive 
lamp which he pointed out to us in one comer of 
the nuns’ chapel : it was lit a hundred and fifty 
years ago by two of our French officers when their 
sister took the veil, and has never been extinguished 
since, except during the siege of 1759. Of course. 
I think a story might be written about this; and 
the truth is, the possibilities of fiction in Quebec 
are overpowering ; I go about in a perfect haze of 
romances, and meet people at every turn who have 
nothing to do but invite the passing novelist into 
their houses, and have their likenesses done at once 
for heroes and heroines. They needn’t change a 
thing about them, but sit just as they are ; and if 
this is in the present, only think how the whole past 
of Quebec must be crying out to be put into histor- 
ical romances ! 

I wish you could see the houses, and how substan- 
tial they are. I can only think of Eriecreek as an 
assemblage of huts and bark-lodges in contrast. 
Our boarding-house is comparatively slight, and has 
stone walls only a foot and a half thick, but the 
average is two feet and two and a half ; and the 
other day Dick went through the Laval University, 
— he goes everywhere and gets acquainted with 
everybody, — and saw the foundation walls of the 
first building, which have stood all the sieges and 
conflagrations since the seventeenth century ; and 
no wonder, for they are six feet thick, and form 
a series of low-vaulted corridors, as heavy, he says, 


A LETTER OF KITTY’S. 


133 


as the casemates of a fortress. There is a beautiful 
old carved staircase there, of the same date ; and 
he liked the president, a priest, ever so much ; and 
we like the looks of all the priests we see ; they are 
so handsome and polite, and they all speak English, 
with some funny little defect. The other day we 
asked such a nice young priest about the way to 
Hare Point, where it is said the Recollet friars had 



their first mission on the marshy meadows : he 
didn’t know of this bit of history, and we showed 
him our book. “ Ah ! you see, the book say ‘ pro- 
bab - ly the site.’ If it had said certainly , I should 
have known. But pro-5a5-ly, pro-5a6-ly, you see ! ” 
However, he showed us the way, and down we went 
through the Lower Town, and out past the General 
Hospital to this Pointe aux Lievres, which is famous 
also because somewhere near it, on the St. Charles, 



134 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


Jacques Cartier wintered in 1536, and kidnapped 
the Indian king Donnacona, whom he carried to 
France. And it was here Montcalm’s forces tried 
to rally after their defeat by Wolfe. (Please read 
this several times to Uncle Jack, so that he can have 
it impressed upon him how faithful I am in my his- 
torical researches.) 

It makes me dreadfully angry and sad to think 
the French should have been robbed of Quebec, 
after what they did to build it. But it is still quite 
a French city in everything, even to sympathy with 
France in the Prussian war, which you would 
hardly think they would care about. Our landlady 
says the very boys in the street know about the 
battles, and explain, every time the French are 
beaten, how they were outnumbered and betrayed, 
— something the way we used to do in the first of 
our war. 

I suppose you will think I am crazy ; but I do 
wish Uncle Jack would wind up his practice at Erie- 
creek, and sell the house, and come to live at 
Quebec. I have been asking prices of things, and 
I find that everything is very cheap, even ac- 
cording to the Eriecreek standard ; we could get a 
beautiful house on the St. Louis Road for two hun- 
dred a year ; beef is ten or twelve cents a pound, 
and everything else in proportion. Then besides 
that, the washing is sent out into the country to be 
done by the peasant-women, and there isn’t a crumb 
of bread baked in the house, but it all comes from 


A LETTER OF KITTY’S. 


135 


the bakers ; and only think, girls, what a relief that 
would be ! Do get Uncle Jack to consider it seri- 
ously . 

Since I began this letter the afternoon has worn 
away — the light from the sunset on the mountains 
would glorify our supper table without extra charge, 
if we lived here — and the twilight has passed, and 
the moon has come up over the gables and dormer- 
windows of the convent, and looks into the garden 
so invitingly that I can’t help joining her. So I 
will put my writing by till to-morrow. The 
going-to-bed bell has rung, and the red lights have 
vanished one by one from the windows, and the 
nuns are asleep, and another set of ghosts are play- 
ing in the garden with the copper-colored phantoms 
of the Indian children of long ago. What ! not 
Madame de la Peltrie ? Oh ! how do they like 
those little fibs of yours up in heaven ? 

Sunday afternoon. — As we were at the French 
cathedral last Sunday, we went to the English to- 
day ; and I could easily have imagined myself in 
some church of Old England, hearing the royal 
family prayed for, and listening to the pretty poor 
sermon delivered with such an English brogue. The 
people, too, had such Englishy faces and such queer 
little eccentricities of dress ; the young lady that 
sang contralto in the choir wore a scarf like a man’s 
on her hat. The cathedral isn’t much, architectur- 
ally, I suppose, but it affected me very solemnly, 
and I coulin’t help feeling that it was as much a 


136 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 

part of British power and grandeur as the citadel 
itself. Over the bishop’s seat drooped the flag of a 
Crimean regiment, tattered by time and battles, 
which was hung up here with great ceremonies, in 
1860, when the Prince of 
Wales presented them with 
new colors ; and up in the 
gallery was a kind of glo- 
rified pew for royal high- 
nesses and governor-gen- 
erals and so forth, to sit in 
when they are here. There 
are tablets and monumental 
busts about the walls ; and 
one to the memory of the 
Duke of Lenox, the gov- 
ernor-general who died in 
the middle of the last cent- 
ury from the bite of a fox ; 
which seemed an odd fate 
for a duke, and somehow 
made me very sorry for 
him. 

Fanny, of course, couldn’t 
go to church with me, and 
Dick got out of it by lin- 
gering too late over the newspapers at the hotel, 
and so I trudged off with our Bostonian, who is still 
with us here. I didn’t dwell much upon him in my 
last letter, and I don’t believe now I can make him 



A LETTER OF KITTY’S. 


137 


quite clear to you. He has been a good deal abroad, 
and he is Europeanized enough not to think much 
of America, though I can’t find that he quite ap- 
proves of Europe, and his experience seems not to 
have left him any particular country in either hemi- 
sphere. 

He isn’t the Bostonian of Uncle Jack’s imagina- 
tion, and I suspect he wouldn’t like to be. He is 
rather too young, still, to have much of an anti- 
slavery record, and even if he had lived soon 
enough, I think that he would not have been a John 
Brown man. I am afraid that he believes in “ vul- 
gar and meretricious distinctions ” of all sorts, and 
;hat he hasn’t an atom of “ magnanimous democ- 
racy ” in him. In fact, I find, to my great aston- 
ishment, that some ideas which I thought were held 
only in England, and which I had never seriously 
thought of, seem actually a part of Mr. Arbuton’s 
nature or education. He talks about the lower 
classes, and tradesmen, and the best people, and 
good families, as I supposed nobody in this country 
ever did, — in earnest. To be sure, I have always 
been reading of characters who had such opinions, 
but I thought they were just put into novels to eke 
out somebody’s unhappiness, — to keep the high- 
born daughter from marrying beneath her for love, 
and so on ; or else to be made fun of in the person 
of some silly old woman or some odious snob ; and 
I could hardly believe at first that our Bostonian 
was serious in talking in that way. Such things 


138 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


sound so differently in real life ; and I laughed at 
them till I found that he didn’t know what to make 
of my laughing, and then I took leave to differ with 
him in some of his notions ; but he never disputes 
anything I say, and so makes it seem rude to differ 
with him. I always feel, though he begins it, as if 
I had thrust my opinions upon him. But in spite 
of his weaknesses and disagreeabilities, there is 
something really high about him ; he is so scrupu- 
lously true, so exactly just, that Uncle Jack him- 
self couldn’t be more so ; though you can see that 
he respects his virtues as the peculiar result of some 
extraordinary system. Here at Quebec, though he 
goes round patronizing the landscape and the an- 
tiquities, and coldly smiling at my little enthusi- 
asms, there is really a great deal that ought to be at 
least improving in him. I get to paying him the 
same respect that he pays himself, and imbues his 
very clothes with, till everything he has on appears 
to look like him and respect itself accordingly. I 
have often wondered what his hat, his honored hat, 
for instance, would do, if I should throw it out of 
the front window. It would make an earthquake, 
I believe. 

He is politely curious about us ; and from time 
to time, in a shrinking, disgusted way, he asks some 
leading question about Eriecreek, which he doesn’t 
seem able to form any idea of, as much as I explain 
it. He clings to his original notion, that it is in the 
heart of the Oil Regions, of which he has seen pic- 


A LETTER OF KITTY’S. 


139 


fcures in the illustrated papers ; and when I assert 
myself against his opinions, he treats me very gin- 
gerly, as if I were an explosive sprite, or an inflam- 
mable naiad from a torpedoed well, and it wouldn’t 
be quite safe to oppose me, or I would disappear 
with a flash and a bang. 

When Dick isn’t able to go with me on Fanny’s 
account, Mr. Arbuton takes his place in the expe- 
ditionary cGrps ; and we have visited a good many 
points of interest together, and now and then he 
talks very entertainingly about his travels. But I 
don’t think they have made him very cosmopolitan. 
It seems as if he went about with a little imaginary 
standard, and was chiefly interested in things, to see 
whether they fitted it or not. Trifling matters an- 
noy him ; and when he finds sublimity mixed up 
with absurdity, it almost makes him angry. One 
of the oddest and oldest-looking buildings in Quebec 
is a little one-story house on St. Louis Street, to 
which poor General Montgomery was taken after he 
was shot ; and it is a pastry-cook’s now, and the 
tarts and cakes in the window vexed Mr. Arbuton 
so much — not that he seemed to care for Mont- 
gomery — that I didn’t dare to laugh. 

I live very little in the nineteenth century at 
present, and do not care much for people who do. 
Still I have a few grains of affection left for Uncle 
Jack, which I want you to give him. 

I suppose it will take about six stamps to pay this 
letter. I forgot to say that Dick goes to be bar 


140 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


bered every day at the “ Montcalm Shaving and 
Shampooing Saloon,” so called because they say 
Montcalm held his last council of war there. It is 
a queer little steep-roofed house, with a flowering 
bean up the front, and a bit of garden, full of snap- 
dragons, before it. 

We shall be here a week or so yet, at any rate, 
and then, I think, we shall go straight home, Dick 
has lost so much time already. 

With a great deal of love, 

Your 


Kitty. 


VII. 


love’s young dream. 

With the two young people whose days now 
lapsed away together, it could not be said that Mon- 
day varied much from Tuesday, or ten o’clock from 
half past three ; they were not always certain what 
day of the week it was, and sometimes they fancied 
that a* thing which happened in the morning had 
taken place yesterday afternoon. 

But whatever it was, and however uncertain in 
time and character their slight adventure was to 
themselves, Mrs. Ellison secured all possible knowl- 
edge of it from Kitty. Since it was her misfortune 
that promoted it, she considered herself a martyr 
to Kitty’s acquaintance with Mr. Arbuton, and be- 
lieved that she had the best claim to any gossip 
that could come of it. She lounged upon her sofa, 
and listened with a patience superior to the maiden 
caprice with which her inquisition was sometimes 
met; for if that delayed her satisfaction it also 
employed her arts, and the final triumph of getting 
everything out of Kitty afforded her a delicate self- 
flattery. But commonly the young girl was ready 
enough to speak, for she was glad to have the light 
of a worldlier mind and a greater experience than 


142 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


her own on Mr. Arbuton’s character : if Mrs. Elli- 
son was not the wisest head, still talking him over 
was at least a relief from thinking him over ; and 
then, at the end of the ends, when were ever two 
women averse to talk of a man ? 

She commonly sought Fanny’s sofa when she 
returned from her rambles through the city, and 
gave a sufficiently strict account of what had hap- 
pened. This was done light-heartedly and with 
touches of burlesque and extravagance at first ; but 
the reports grew presently to have a more serious 
tone, and latterly Kitty had been so absent at times 
that she would fall into a puzzled silence in the 
midst of her narration ; or else she would meet a 
long procession of skillfully marshaled questions 
with a flippancy that no one but a martyr could 
Have suffered. But Mrs. Ellison bore all and would 
have borne much more in that cause. Baffled at 
one point, she turned to another, and the sum of her 
researches was often a clearer perception of Kitty’s 
state of mind than the young girl herself possessed. 
For her, indeed, the whole affair was full of mystery 
and misgiving. 

“ Our acquaintance ha3 the charm of novelty 
every time we meet,” she said once, when pressed 
bard by Mrs. Ellison. “We are growing better 
strangers, Mr. Arbuton and I. By and by, some 
morning, we shall not know each other by sight. 1 
can barely recognize him now, though I thought I 
knew him pretty well once. I want you to un- 


LOVES YOUN a DREAM. 143 

dentand that I speak as an unbiased spectator, 
Fanny.” 

“ Oh, Kitty ! how can you accuse me of trying to 
pry into your affairs ! ” cries injured Mrs. Ellison, 
and settles herself in a more comfortable posture for 
listening. 

“ I don’t accuse you of anything. I’m sure 
you’ve a right to know everything about me. Only, 
I want you really to know.” 

“ Yes, dear,” says the matron, with hypocritical 
meekness. 

“Well,” resumes Kitty, “ there are things that 
puzzle me more and more about him, — things that 
used to amuse me at first, because I didn’t actually 
believe that they could be, and that I felt like de 
fying afterwards. But now I can’t bear up against 
them. They frighten me, and seem to deny me the 
right to be what I believe I am.” 

“ I don’t understand you, Kitty.” 

“ Why, you’ve seen how it is with us at home, and 
how Uncle Jack has brought us up. We never had 
a rule for anything except to do what was right, 
and to be careful of the rights of others.” 

“ Well.” 

“Well, Mr. Arbuton seems to have lived in a 
world where everything is regulated by some iigid 
law that it would be death to break. Then, you 
toiow, at home we are always talking about people, 
and discussing them ; but we always talk of each 
person for what he is in himself, and I always 


144 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


thought a person could refine himself if he tried, 
and was sincere, and not conceited. But he seems 
to judge people according to their origin and local- 
ity and calling, and to believe that all refinement 
must come from just such training and circum- 
stances as his own. Without exactly saying so, he 
puts everything else quite out of the question. He 
doesn’t appear to dream that there can be any dif- 
ferent opinion. He tramples upon all that I have 
been taught to believe ; and though I cling the 
closer to my idols, I can’t help, now and then, try- 
ing myself by his criterions ; and then I find myself 
wanting in every civilized trait, and my whole life 
coarse and poor, and all my associations hopelessly 
degraded. I think his ideas are hard and narrow, 
and I believe that even my little experience would 
prove them false ; but then, they are his, and I can’t 
reconcile them with what I see is good in him.” 

Kitty spoke with half-averted face where she sat 
beside one of the front windows, looking absently 
out on the distant line of violet hills beyond Oharles- 
bourg, and now and then lifting her glove from her 
lap and letting it drop again. 

“ Kitty,” said Mrs. Ellison in reply to her diffi- 
culties, “ you oughtn’t to sit against a light like 
that. It makes your profile quite black to any one 
back in the room.” 

“ Oh well, Fanny, I’m not black in reality.” 

“ Yes, but a young lady ought always to think 
how she is looking. Suppose some one was to come 


love’s young dream. 


145 


“ Dick’s tlie only one likely to come in just now, 
and he wouldn’t mind it. But if you like it better, 
I’ll come and sit by you,” said Kitty, and took her 
place beside the sofa. 

Her hat was in her hand, her sack on her arm ; 
the fatigue of a recent walk gave her a soft pallor, 
and languor of face and attitude. Mrs. Ellison 
admired her pretty looks with a generous regret 
that they should be wasted on herself, and then 
asked, “ Where were you this afternoon ? ” 

“ Oh, we went to the Hotel Dieu, for one thing, 
and afterwards we looked into the court-yard of the 
convent; and there another of his pleasant little 
traits came out, — a way he has of always putting 
you in the wrong even when it’s a matter of no 
consequence any way, and there needn’t be any 
right or wrong about it. I remembered the place 
because Mrs. March, you know, showed us a rose 
that one of the nuns in the hospital gave her, and 
I tried to tell Mr. Arbuton about it, and he gra- 
ciously took it as if poor Mrs. March had made an 
advance towards his acquaintance. I do wish y ou 
could see what a lovely place that court-yard is, 
Fanny. It’s so strange that such a thing should 
be right there, in the heart of this crowded city ; 
but there it was, with its peasant cottage on one 
side, and its long, low barns on the other, and those 
wide-horned Canadian cows munching at the racks 
of hay outside, and pigeons and chickens all about 
among their feet” — 

10 


146 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 



“ Yes, yes ; never mind all 
that, Kitty. You know I hate 
nature. Go on about Mr. Arbu- 
ton,” said Mrs. Ellison, who did 
not mean a sarcasm. 

“ It looked like a farm-yard in a picture, far out 
in the country somewhere,” resumed Kitty ; “ and 
Mr. Arbuton did it the honor to say it was just like 
Normandy.” 

“ Kitty ! ” 

“ He did, indeed, Fanny ; and the cows didn’t go 
down on their knees out of gratitude, either. Well, 
off on the right were the hospital buildings climb- 
ing up, you know, with their stone walls and 
steep roofs, and windows dropped about over them, 
like our convent here ; and there was an artist 
there, sketching it all ; he had such a brown, pleas- 



love’s young dream. 


147 


ant face, with a little black mustache and imperial, 
and such gay black eyes, that nobody could help 
falling in love with him ; and he was talking in 
such a free-and-easy way with the lazy workmen 
and women overlooking him. He jotted down a 
little image of the Virgin in a niche on the wall, 
and one of the peop^ called out, — Mr. Arbuton 
was translating, — 1 Look there ! with one touch 
he’s made our Blessed Lady.’ ‘ Oh,’ says the painter, 

4 that’s nothing ; with three touches I can mak^ 
the entire Holy Family.’ And they all laughed; 
and that little joke, you know, won my heart, — I 
don’t hear many jokes from Mr. Arbuton; — and 
so I said what a blessed life a painter’s must be, for 
it would give you a right to be a vagrant, and you 
could wander through the world, seeing everything 
that was lovely and funny, and nobody could blame 
you ; and I wondered everybody who had the 
chance didn’t learn to sketch. Mr. Arbuton took 
it seriously, and said people had to have something 
more than the chance to learn before they could 
sketch, and that most of them were an affliction 
with their sketch-books, and he had seen too nuch 
of the sad effects of drawing from casts. And he 
put me in the wrong, as he always does. Don’t you 
see ? I didn’t want to learn drawing ; I wanted cj 
be a painter, and go about sketching beautiful old 
convents, and sit on camp-stools on pleasant after- 
noons, and joke with people. Of course, he 
couldn’t understand that. But I know the artist 


148 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


could. Oh, Fanny, if it had only been the painter 
whose arm I took that first day on the boat, instead 
of Mr. Arbuton ! But the worst of it is, he is 
making a hypocrite of me, and a cowardly, unnat- 
ural girl. I wanted to go nearer and look at the 
painter’s sketch ; but I was ashamed to say I’d 
never seen a real artist’s sketch before, and I’m get- 
ting to be ashamed, or to seem ashamed, of a great 
many innocent things. He has a way of not seem- 
ing to think it possible that any one he associates 
with can differ from him. And I do differ from 
him. I differ from him as much as my whole past 
life differs from his ; I know I’m just the kind of 
production he disapproves of, and that I’m alto- 
gether irregular and unauthorized and unjustifiable ; 
and though it’s funny to have him talking to me as 
if I must have the sympathy of a rich girl with his 
ideas, it’s provoking, too, and it’s very bad for me. 
Up to the present moment, Fanny, if you want to 
know, that’s the principal effect of Mr. Arbuton on 
me. I’m being gradually snubbed and scared into 
treasons, stratagems, and spoils.” 

Mrs. Ellison did not find all this so very grievous, 
for she was one of those women who like a snub 
from the superior sex, if it does not involve a slight 
to their beauty or their power of pleasing. But 
she thought it best not to enter into the question, 
and merely said, “ But surely, Kitty, there are a 
great many things in Mr. Arbuton that you must 
respect.” 


love’s young dream. 


149 


“ Respect ? Oh, yes, indeed ! But respect isn’t 
just the thing for one who seems to consider himself 
sacred. Say revere , Fanny ; say revere ! ” 

Kitty had risen from her chair, but Mrs. Ellison 
waved her again to her seat with an imploring ges- 
ture. “ Don’t go, Kitty ; I’m not half done with 
you yet. You must tell me something more. 
You’ve stirred me up so, now. I know you don’t 
always have such disagreeable times. You’ve often 
come home quite happy. What do you generally 
find to talk about ? Do tell me some particulars for 
once.” 

“ Why, little topics come up, you know. But 
sometimes we don’t talk at all, because I don’t like 
to say what I think or feel, for fear I should be 
thinking or feeling something vulgar. Mr. Arbu- 
ton is rather a blight upon conversation in that way. 
He makes you doubtful whether there isn’t some- 
thing a little common in breathing and the circula- 
tion of the blood, and whether it wouldn’t be true 
refinement to stop them.” 

“ Stuff, Kitty ! He’s very cultivated, isn’t he ? 
Don’t you talk about books ? He’s read everything, 
I suppose.” 

“ Oh yes, he’s read enough.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“Nothing. Only sometimes it seems to me as 
if he hadn’t read because he loved it, but because 
he thought it due to himself. But maybe I’m 
mistaken. I^ould imagine a delicate poem shut- 


A 




150 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


ting up half its sweetness from his cold, cold scru- 
tiny, — if you will excuse the floweriness of the 
idea.” 

“ Why, Kitty ! don’t you think he’s refined ? 
I’m sure, I think he’s a very refined person.” 

“ He’s a very elaborated person. But I don’t 
think it would make much difference to him what 
our opinion of him was. His own good opinion 
would be quite enough.” 

“ Is he — is he — always agreeable ? ” 

“I thought we were discussing his mind, Fanny. 
I don’t know that I feel like enlarging upon his 
manners,” said Kitty, slyly. 

“ But surely, Kitty,” said the matron, with an 
air of argument, “ there’s some connection between 
his mind and his manners.” 

“ Yes, I suppose so. I don’t think there’s much 
between his heart and his manners. They seem to 
have been put on him instead of having come out 
of him. He’s very well trained, and nine times out 
of ten he’s so exquisitely polite that it’s wonderful ; 
but the tenth time he may say something so rude 
that you can’t believe it.” 

“ Then you like him nine times out of ten.” 

“ I didn’t say that. But for the tenth time, it’s 
certain, his training doesn’t hold out, and he seems 
to have nothing natural to fall back upon. But yon 
can believe that, if he knew he’d been disagree- 
able, he’d be sorry for it.” 

“ Why, then, Kitty, how can you say that there’s 


love’s young dream. 


151 


no connection between bis heart and manners? 
This very thing proves that they come from his 
heart. Don’t be illogical, Kitty,” said Mrs. Elli- 
son, and her nerves added, sotto voce , “ if you are 
so abominably provoking ! ” 

“ Oh,” responded the young girl, with the kind 
of laugh that meant it was, after all, not such 9 
laughing matter, “ I didn’t say he’d be sorry foi 
you ! Perhaps he would ; but he’d be certain to 
be sorry for himself. It’s with his politeness as it 
is with his reading ; he seems to consider it some- 
thing that’s due to himself as a gentleman to treat 
people well ; and it isn’t in the least as if he 
cared for them . He wouldn’t like to fail in such a 
point.” 

“ But, Kitty, isn’t that to his credit ? ” 

“Maybe. I don’t say. If I knew more about 
the world, perhaps I should admire it. But now, 
you see,” — and here Kitty’s laugh grew more nat- 
ural, and she gave a subtle caricature of Mr. Arbu- 
ton’s air and tone as she spoke, — “ I can’t help 
feeling that it’s a little — vulgar.” 

Mrs. Ellison could not quite make out how much 
Kitty really meant of what she had said. She 
gasped once or twice for argument ; then she sat 
up, and beat the sofa-pillows vengefully in com- 
posing herself anew, and finally, “ Well, Kitty, I’m 
sure I don’t know what to make of it all,” she said 
with a sigh. 

“ Why, we’re not obliged to make anything of 


152 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


it, Fanny, there’s that comfort,” replied Kitty ; and 
then there was a silence, while she brooded over the 
whole affair of her acquaintance with Mr. Arbuton, 
which this talk had failed to set in a more pleasant 
or hopeful light. It had begun like a romance ; she 
had pleased her fancy, if not her heart, with the 
poetry of it ; but at last she felt exiled and strange 
in his presence. She had no right to a different re- 
sult, even through any deep feeling in the matter ; 
but while she owned, with her half -sad, lialf-comical, 
consciousness, that she had been tacitly claiming 
and expecting too much, she softly pitied herself, 
with a kind of impersonal compassion, as if it were 
some other girl whose pretty dream had been 
broken. Its ruin involved the loss of another ideal ; 
for she was aware that there had been gradually 
rising in her mind an image of Boston, different 
alike from the holy place of her childhood, the sa- 
cred city of the anti-slavery heroes and martyrs, and 
from the jesting, easy, sympathetic Boston of Mr. 
and Mrs. March. This new Boston with which Mr. 
Arbuton inspired her was a Boston of mysterious 
prejudices and lofty reservations ; a Boston of high 
and difficult tastes, that found its social ideal in the 
Old World, and that shrank from contact with the 
reality of this ; a Boston as alien as Europe to her 
simple experiences, and that seemed to be proud 
only of the things that were unlike other American 
things ; a Boston that would rather perish by fire 
and sword than be suspected of vulgarity ; a critb 


love’s young dream. 


153 


cal, fastidious, and reluctant Boston, dissatisfied 
with the rest of the hemisphere, and gelidly self- 
satisfied in so far as it was not in the least the Bos- 
ton of her fond preconceptions. It was, doubtless, 
nu more the real Boston we know and love, than 
either of the others ; and it perplexed her more 
than it need, even if it had not been mere phan- 
tasm. It made her suspicious of Mr. Arbuton’s be- 
havior towards her, and observant of little things 
that might very well have otherwise escaped her. 
The bantering humor, the light-hearted trust and 
self-reliance with which she had once met him de- 
serted her, and only returned fitfully when some 
accident called her out of herself, and made her for- 
get the differences that she now too plainly saw in 
their ways of thinking and feeling. It was a greater 
and greater effort to place herself in sympathy with 
him ; she relaxed into a languid self-contempt, as if 
she had been playing a part, when she succeeded. 
“ Sometimes, Fanny,” she said, now, after a long 
pause, speaking in behalf of that other girl she had 
been thinking of, “ it seems to me as if Mr. Arbu- 
ton were all gloves and slim umbrella, — the mere 
husk of well-dressed culture and good manners. 
His looks do promise everything ; but oh dear me ! 
I should be sorry for any one that was in love with 
him. Just imagine some girl meeting with such a 
man, and taking a fancy to him ! I suppose she 
never would quite believe but that he must some- 
how be what she first thought him, and she would 


154 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


go down to her grave believing that she had failed 
to understand him. What a curious story it would 
make ! ” 

“ Then, why don’t you write it, Kitty?” asked 
Mrs. Ellison. “ No one could do it better.” 

Kitty flushed quickly ; then she smiled : “ Oh, I 
don’t think I could do it at all. It wouldn’t be a 
very easy story to work out. Perhaps he might 
never do anything positively disagreeable enough to 
make anybody condemn him. The only way you 
could show his character would be to have her do 
and say hateful things to him, when she couldn’t 
help it, and then repent of it, while he was impas- 
sively perfect through everything. And perhaps, 
after all, he might be regarded by some stupid peo- 
ple as the injured one. Well, Mr. Arbuton has 
been very polite to us, I’m sure, Fanny,” she said 
after another pause, as she rose from her chair, 
“ and maybe I’m unjust to him. I beg his pardon 
of you ; and I wish,” she added with a dull disap- 
pointment quite her own, and a pang of surprise at 
words that seemed to utter themselves, “ that he 
would go away.” 

“ Why, Kitty, I’m shocked,” said Mrs. Ellison, 
rising from her cushions. 

“ Yes ; so am I, Fanny.” 

“ Are you really tired of him, then ? ” 

Kitty did not answer, but turned away her face a 
little, where she stood beside the chair in which she 
had been sitting. 








“ No, I won't, Fanny," answered the young girl. — Page 155 


love’s young dream. 


155 


Mrs. Ellison put out her hand towards her. 
u Kitty, come here,” she said with imperious tender- 
ness. 

“ No, I won’t, Fanny,” answered the young girl, 
in a trembling voice. She raised the glove that she 
had been nervously swinging back and forth, and 
bit hard upon the button of it. “ I don’t know 
whether I’m tired of Mm, — though he isn’t a per- 
son to rest one a great deal, — but I’m tired of it. 
I’m perplexed and troubled the whole time, and I 
don’t see any end to it. Yes, I wish he would go 
away ! Yes, he is tiresome. What is he staying 
here for ? If he thinks himself so much better than 
all of us, I wonder he troubles himself with our 
company. It’s quite time for him to go. No, 
Fanny, no,” cried Kitty with a little broken laugh, 
still rejecting the outstretched hand, “ I'll be flat in 
private, if you please.” And dashing her hand 
across her eyes, she flitted out of the room. At the 
door she turned and said, “ You needn’t think it’s 
what you think it is, Fanny.” 

“ No indeed, dear ; you’re just overwrought.” 

“ For I really wish he’d go.” 

But it was on this very day that Mr. Arbuton 
iound it harder than ever to renew his resolution of 
quitting Quebec, and cutting short at once his ac- 
quaintance with these people. He had been pledg- 
ing himself to this in some form every day, and 
every morrow had melted his resolution away. 
Whatever was his opinion of Colonel and Mrs. Elli- 


156 


A UHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


son, it is certain that, if he considered Kitty merely 
in relation to the present, he could not have said 
how, by being different, she could have been better 
than she was. He perceived a charm, that would 
be recognized anywhere, in her manner, though it 
was not of his world ; her fresh pleasure in all she 
saw, though he did not know how to respond to it, 
was very winning ; he respected what he thought 
the good sense running through her transports ; he 
wondered at the culture she had somewhere, some- 
how got ; and he was so good as to find that her 
literary enthusiasms had nothing offensive, but were 
as pretty and naive as a girl’s love of flowers. 
Moreover, he approved of some personal attributes 
of hers : a low, gentle voice, tender, long-lashed 
eyes ; a trick of drooping shoulders, and of idle 
hands fallen into the lap, one in the other’s palm ; 
a serene repose of face ; a light and eager laugh. 
There was nothing so novel in those traits, and in 
different combination he had seen them a thousand 
times ; yet in her they strangely wrought upon his 
fancy. She had that soft, kittenish way with her 
which invites a caressing patronage, but, as he 
learned, she had also the kittenish equipment for 
resenting over-condescension ; and she never took 
him half so much as when she showed the high 
Bpirit that was in her, and defied him most. 

For here and now, it was all well enough ; but 
he had a future to which he owed much, and a con- 
science that would not leave him at rest. The fasci- 


LOVE’S young dream. 


157 


nation of meeting her so familiarly under the same 
roof, the sorcery of the constant sight of her, were 
becoming too much ; it would not do on any ac- 
count ; for his own sake he must put an end to it. 
But from hour to hour he lingered upon his unen- 
forced resolve. The passing days, that brought 
him doubts in which he shuddered at the great dif- 
ference between himself and her and her people, 
brought him also moments of blissful forgetfulness 
in which his misgivings were lost in the sweetness 
of her looks, or the young grace of her motions. 
Passing, the days rebuked his delay in vain ; a 
week and two weeks slipped from under his feet, 
and still he had waited for fate to part him and his 
folly. But now at last he would go ; and in the 
evening, after his cigar on Durham Terrace, he 
knocked at Mrs. Ellison’s door to say that on the 
day after to-morrow he should push on to the White 
Mountains. 

He found the Ellisons talking over an expedition 
for the next morning, in which he was also to take 
part. Mrs. Ellison had already borne her full share 
in the preparation ; for, being always at hand there 
in her room, and having nothing to do, she had been 
almost a willing victim to the colonel’s passion for 
information at second-hand, and had probably come 
to know more than any other American woman of 
Arnold’s expedition against Quebec in 1775. She 
knew why the attack was planned, and with what 
prodigious hazard and heroical toil and endurance it 


158 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


was carried out ; how the dauntless little army of 
riflemen cut their way through the untrodden forests 
of Maine and Canada, and beleaguered the gray old 
fortress on her rock till the red autumn faded into 
winter, and, on the last bitter night of the year, 
flung themselves against her defenses, and fell back, 
leaving half their number captive, Montgomery 
dead, and Arnold wounded, but haplessly destined 
to survive. 

“ Yes,” said the colonel, “ considering the age in 
which they lived, and their total lack of modem 
improvements, mental, moral, and physical, we must 
acknowledge that they did pretty well. It wasn’t 
on a very large scale ; but I don’t see how they 
could have been braver, if every man had been mul- 
tiplied by ten thousand. In fact, as it’s going to be 
all the same thing a hundred years from now, I 
don’t know but I’d as soon be one of the men that 
tried to take Quebec as one of the men that did take 
Atlanta. Of course, for the present, and on ac- 
count of my afflicted family, Mr. Arbuton, I’m will- 
ing to be what and where I am ; but just see what 
those fellows did.” And the colonel drew from his 
glowing memory of Mrs. Ellison’s facts a brave his- 
torical picture of Arnold’s expedition. “ And now 
we’re going to-morrow morning to look up the scene 
of the attack on the 31st of December. Kitty, sing 
something.” 

At another time Kitty might have hesitated ; but 
that evening she was so at rest about Mr. Arbuton, 


love’s young dream. 


159 


so sure she cared nothing for his liking or disliking 
anything she did, that she sat down at the piano, 
and sang a number of songs, which I suppose were 
as unworthy the cultivated ear as any he had heard. 
But though they were given with an untrained 
voice and a touch as little skilled as might be, they 
pleased, or else the singer pleased. The simple- 
hearted courage of the performance would alone 
have made it charming ; and Mr. Arbuton had no 
reason to ask himself how he should like it in Bos- 
ton, if he were married, and should hear it from his 
wife there. Yet when a young man looks at a 
young girl or listens to her, a thousand vagaries 
possess his mind, — formless imaginations, lawless 
fancies. The question that presented itself re- 
motely, like pain in a dream, dissolved in the ripple 
of the singer’s voice, and left his reverie the more 
luxuriously untroubled for having been. 

He remembered, after saying good night, that he 
had forgotten something: it was to tell them he 
was going away. 


VIII. 


NEXT MORNING. 

Quebec lay shining in the tender oblique light ol 
the northern sun when they passed next morning 
through the Upper Town market-place and took 
their way towards Hope Gate, where they were to 
be met by the colonel a little later. It is easy for 
the alert tourist to lose his course in Quebec, and 
they, who were neither hurried nor heedful, went 
easily astray. But the street into which they had 
wandered, if it did not lead straight to Hope Gate, 
had many merits, and was very characteristic of the 
city. Most of the houses on either hand were low 
structures of one story, built heavily of stone or 
stuccoed brick, with two dormer-windows, full of 
house-plants, in each roof ; the doors were each 
painted of a livelier color than the rest of the house, 
and each glistened with a polished brass knob, a 
..large brass knocker, or an intricate bell-pull of the 
same resplendent metal, and a plate bearing the 
owner’s name and his professional title, which if not 
avocat was sure to be notaire , so well is Quebec sup- 
plied with those ministers of the law. At the side 
of each house was a porte-cochere, and in this a 
smaller door. The thresholds and doorsteps were 


NEXT MORNING. 


161 


covered with the neatest and brightest oil-cloth ; 
the wooden sidewalk was very clean, like the steep, 
roughly paved street itself ; and at the foot of the 
hill down which it sloped was a breadth of the city 
wall, pierced for musketry, and, past the cornei 
of one of the houses, the half-length of cannon 
showing. It had the charm of those 
ancient streets, dear to Old-World 
travel, in which the past and the 
present, decay and repair, peace and 
war, have made friends in an effect 
that not only wins the eye, but, how- 
ever illogically, touches the heart ; 
and over the top of the wall it had 
a stretch of such landscape as I 
know not what Old-World street 
can command: the St. Lawrence, 
blue and wide ; a bit of the white 
village of Beauport on its bank ; 
then a vast breadth of pale-green, 
upward-sloping meadows ; then the 
purple heights ; and the hazy 
heaven over them. Half-way down this happy 
street sat the artist whom they had seen before in 
the court of the Hdtel Dieu ; he was sketching some- 
thing, and evoking the curious life of the neighbor- 
hood. Two school-boys in the uniform of the Sem- 
inary paused to look at him as they loitered down 
the pavement ; a group of children encircled him ; 
a little girl with her hair in blue ribbons talked at a 
11 



162 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 

window about him to some one within ; a young lady 
opened her casement and gazed furtively at him ; a 
door was set quietly ajar, and an old giandam 
peeped out, shading her eyes with her hand; a 
woman in deep mourning gave his sketch a glance 
as she passed ; a calash with a fat Quebecker in it 

ran into a cart driven 
by a broad-hatted 
peasant-woman, so 
eager were both to 
know what he was 
drawing ; a man lin- 
gered even at the 
head of the street, as 
if it were any use to 
stop there. 

As Kitty and Mr. 
Arbuton passed him, 
the artist glanced at 
her with the smile of 
a man who believes 
he knows how the 
case stands, and she 
followed his eye in 
its withdrawal towards the bit he was sketching: 
an old roof, and on top of this a balcony, shut in 
with green blinds; yet higher, a weather-worn, 
wood-colored gallery, pent-roofed and balustered, 
with a geranium showing through the balusters ; a 
dormer-window with hook and tackle, beside an 



NEXT MORNING. 


163 


Oriental-shaped pavilion with a shining tin dome, — 
a picturesque confusion of forms which had been, 
apparently, added from time to time without design, 
and yet were full of harmony. The unreasonable 
succession of roofs had lifted the top far above the 
level of the surrounding houses, into the heart of 
the morning light, and some white doves circled 
about the pavilion, or nestled cooing upon the 
window-sill, where a young girl sat and sewed. 

' 4 Why, it’s Hilda in her tower,” said Kitty, “ of 
course ! And this is just the kind of street for such 
a girl to look down into. It doesn’t seem like a 
street in real life, does it ? The people all look as 
if they had stepped out of stories, and might step 
back any moment ; and these queer little houses : 
they’re the very places for things to happen in ! ” 

Mr. Arbuton smiled forbearingly, as she thought, 
at this burst, but she did not care, and she turned, 
at the bottom of the street, and lingered a few 
moments for another look at the whole charming 
picture ; and then he praised it, and said that the 
artist was making a very good sketch. “ I wonder 
Quebec isn’t infested by artists the whole summer 
long,” he added. “ They go about hungrily pick- 
ing up bits of the picturesque along our shores and 
country roads, when they might exchange their 
famine for a feast by coming here.” 

“ I suppose there’s a pleasure in finding out the 
small graces and beauties of the poverty-stricken 
subjects, that they wouldn’t have in better ones. 


164 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


isn’t there?” asked Kitty. “At any rate, if I 
were to write a story, I should want to take the 
slightest sort of plot, and lay the scene in the 
dullest kind of place, and then bring out all their 
possibilities. I’ll tell you a book after my own 
heart: ‘ Details ,’ — just the history of a week in 
the life of some young people who happen together 
in an old New England country-house ; nothing 
extraordinary, little, every-day things told so ex- 
quisitely, and all fading naturally away without any 
particular result, only the full meaning of every- 
thing brought out.’' 

“ And don’t you think it’s rather a sad ending 
for all to fade away without any particular result ? ” 
asked the young man, stricken he hardly knew how 
or where. “ Besides, I always thought that the 
author of that book found too much meaning in 
everything. He did for men, I’m sure ; but I be • 
lieve women are different, and see much more than 
we do in a little space.” 

“ ‘ Why has not man a microscopic eye? 

For this plain reason, man is not a fly,’ 

nor a woman,” mocked Kitty. “ Have you read his 
other books ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Aren’t they delightful ? ” 

“ They’re very well ; and I always wondered he 
could write them. He doesn’t look it.” 

“ Oh, have you ever seen him ? ” 

“ He lives in Boston, you know.” 


NEXT MORNING. 


165 


“ Yes, yes ; but ” — Kitty could not go on and 
say that she had not supposed authors consorted 
with creatures of common clay ; and Mr. Arbuton, 
who was the constant guest of people who would 
have thought most authors sufficiently honored in 
being received among them to meet such men as 
he, was very far from guessing what was in her 
mind 

He waited a moment for her, and then said, 
“ He’s a very ordinary sort of man, — not what one 
would exactly call a gentleman, you know, in hia 
belongings, — and yet his books have nothing of the 
shop, nothing professionally literary, about them. 
It seems as if almost any of us might have written 
them.” 

Kitty glanced quickly at him to see if he were 
jesting ; but Mr. Arbuton wa3 not easily given to 
irony, and he was now very much in earnest about 
drawing on his light overcoat, which he had hitherto 
carried on his arm with that scrupulous considera- 
tion for it which was not dandyism, but part of his 
self-respect ; apparently, as an overcoat, he cared 
nothing for it ; as the overcoat of a man of his con- 
dition he cared everything ; and now, though the 
sun was so bright on the open spaces, in these nar- 
row streets the garment was comfortable. 

At another time, Kitty would have enjoyed the 
care with which he smoothed it about his person, 
but this profanation of her dearest ideals made the 
moment serious. Her pulse quickened, and she 


166 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


said, “ I’m afraid I can’t enter into your feelings. 
I wasn’t taught to respect the idea of a gentleman 
very much. I’ve often heard my uncle say that, at 
the best, it was a poor excuse for not being j ust 
honest and just brave and just kind, and a false 
pretense of being something more. I believe, if 
I were a man, I shouldn’t want to be a gentle- 
man. At any rate, I’d rather be the author of 
those books, which any gentleman might have writ- 
ten, than all the gentlemen who didn’t, put to- 
gether.” 

In the career of her indignation she had uncon- 
sciously hurried her companion forward so swiftly 
that they had reached Hope Gate as she spoke, and 
interrupted the reverie in which Colonel Ellison, 
loafing up against the masonry, was contemplating 
the sentry in his box. 

“ You’d better not overheat yourself so early in 
the day, Kitty,” said her cousin, serenely, with a 
glance at her flushed face ; “ this expedition is not 
going to be any joke.” 

Now that Prescott Gate, by which so many thou- 
sands of Americans have entered Quebec since Ar- 
nold’s excursionists failed to do so is demolished, there 
is nothing left so picturesque and characteristic as 
Hope Gate, and I doubt if anywhere in Europe 
there is a more mediaeval-looking bit of military 
architecture. The heavy stone gateway is black 
with age, and the gate, which has probably never 
been closed in our century, is of massive frame set 


NEXT MORNING. 


16T 


thick with mighty bolts and spikes. The wall here 
sweeps along the brow of the crag on which the 
city is built, and a steep street drops down, by stone- 
parapeted curves and angles, from the Upper to the 
Lower Town, where, in 1775, nothing but a narrow 
lane bordered the St. Lawrence. A considerable 
breadth of land has since been won from the river, 
and several streets and many piers now stretch be- 
tween this alley and the 
water; but the old Sault 
au Matelot still crouches 
and creeps along under 
the shelter of the city 
wall and the over- 
hanging rock, which is 
thickly bearded with 
weeds and grass, and 
trickles with abundant 
moisture. It must be 
an ice-pit in winter, and 
I should think it the 
last spot on the continent for the summer to find ; 
but when the summer has at last found it, the 
old Sault au Matelot puts on a vagabond air of 
Southern leisure and abandon, not to be matched 
anywhere out of Italy. Looking from that jutting 
rock near Hope Gate, behind which the defeated 
Americans took refuge from the fire of their ene- 
mies, the vista is almost unique for a certain scenic 
squalor and gypsy luxury of color : sag-roofed barns 



168 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 



and stables, and weak-backed, sunken-chested work* 
shops of every sort lounge along in tumble-down 
succession, and lean up against the cliff in every 
imaginable posture of worthlessness and decrepi- 
tude ; light 
wooden gal- 
leries cross to 
them from the 
second stories 
of the houses 
which back 
upon the al- 
ley ; and over 
these galleries 
flutters, from 
a labyrinth of 
clothes - lines, 
a variety of 
bright- colored 
garments of 
all ages, sexes, 
and condi- 
tions ; while 
the footway 
underneath 
abounds in 
gossiping women, smoking men, idle poultry, cats, 
children, and large, indolent Newfoundland dogs. 

“It was through this lane that Arnold’s party 
advanced almost to the foot of Mountain Street, 



NEXT MORNING. 


169 


where they were to be joined by Montgomery’s 
force in an attempt to surprise Prescott Gate,” said 
the colonel, with his unerring second-hand history. 

“ ‘ You that will follow me to this attemnt.’ 

4 Wait till you see the whites of their eyes, and 
then fire low,’ and so forth. By the way, do you 
suppose anybody did that at Bunker Hill, Mr. Ar- 
buton? Come, you’re a Boston man. My expe- 
rience is that recruits chivalrously fire into the air 
without waiting to see the enemy at all, let alone 
the whites of their eyes. Why ! aren’t you com- 
ing?” he asked, seeing no movement to follow in 
Kitty or Mr. Arbuton. 

44 It doesn’t look very pleasant under foot, Dick ” 
suggested Kitty. 

44 Well, upon my word ! Is this your uncle’s 
niece ? I shall never dare to report this panic at 
Eriecreek.” 

44 1 can see the whole length of the alley, and 
there’s nothing in it but chickens and domestic ani- 
mals.” 

“ Very well, as Fanny says ; when Uncle Jack 
— he’s your uncle — asks you about every inch of 
the ground that Arnold’s men were demoralized 
over, I hope you’ll know what to say.” 

Kitty laughed and said she should try a little in- 
vention, if her Uncle Jack came down to inches. 

44 All right, Kitty ; you can go along St. Paul 
Street, there, and Mr. Arbuton and 1 will explore 


170 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


the Sault au Matelot, and come out upon you, car* 
ered with glory, at the other end.” 

“ I hope it’ll be glory,” said Kitty, with a glance 
at the lane, “ but I think it’s more likely to be 
feathers and chopped straw. Good-by, Mr. Arbu- 
ton.” 

“ Not in the least,” answered the young man ; 
“ I’m going with you.” 

The colonel feigned indignant surprise, and 
marched briskly down the Sault au Matelot alone, 
while the others took their way through St. Paul 
Street in the same direction, amidst the bustle and 
business of the port, past the banks and great com- 
mercial houses, with the encounter of throngs of 
seafaring faces of many nations, and, at the corner 
of St. Peter Street, a glimpse of the national flag 
thrown out from the American Consulate, which 
intensified for untravelled Kitty her sense of re- 
moteness from her native land. At length they 
turned into the street now called Sault au Matelot, 
into which opens the lane once bearing that name, 
and strolled idly along in the -cool shadow, silence, 
and solitude of the street. She was strangely re- 
leased from the constraint which Mr. Arbuton usu- 
ally put upon her. A certain defiant ease filled 
her heart ; she felt and thought whatever she Jked, 
for the first time in many days ; while lie went puz- 
zling himself with the problem of a young lady 
who despised gentlemen, and yet remained charm 
Wig to him. 


NEXT MORNING. 


171 


A mighty marine smell of oakum and salt-fish 
was in the air, and “ Oh,” sighed Kitty, “ doesn’t 
it make you long for distant seas ? Shouldn’t you 
like to be shipwrecked for half a day or so, Mr. 
Arbuton ? ” 

“ Yes ; yes, certainly,” he replied absently, and 
wondered what she laughed at. The silence of the 
place was broken only by the noise of coopering 
whicli seemed to be going on in every other house ; 
the solitude relieved only by the Newfoundland 
dogs that stretched themselves upon the thresholds 
of the cooper-shops. The monotony of these shops 
and dogs took Kitty’s humor, and as they went 
slowly by she made a jest of them, as she used to 
do with things she saw. 

“ But here’s a door without a dog ! ” she said, 
presently. “ This can’t be a genuine cooper-shop, 
of course, without a dog. Oh, that accounts for it, 
perhaps ! ” she added, pausing before the threshold, 
and glancing up at a sign — “ Academie commerciale 
et litter air e ” — set under an upper window. “ What 
a curious place for a seat of learning! What do 
you suppose is the connection between cooper-shops 
and an academical education, Mr. Arbuton ? ” 

She stood looking up at the sign that moved her 
mirth, and swinging her shut parasol idly to and 
fro, while a light of laughter played over her face. 

Suddenly a shadow seemed to dart betwixt her 
and the open doorway, Mr. Arbuton was hurled 
vioWtly against her, and, as she struggled to keep 


172 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


her footing under the shock, she saw him bent ovei 
a furious dog, that hung from the breast of his over- 
coat, while he clutched its throat with both his 
hands. 

He met the terror of her face with a quick 
glance. “ I beg your pardon ; don’t call out, please,” 
he said. But from within the shop came loud cries 
and maledictions, “ Oh nom de Dieu ! c’est le boule- 
dogue du capitaine anglais ! ” with appalling screams 
for help ; and a wild, uncouth little figure of a man, 
bareheaded, horror-eyed, came flying out of the 
open door. He wore a cooper’s apron, and he bore 
in one hand a red-hot iron, which, with continuous 
clamor, he dashed against the muzzle of the hide- 
ous brute. Without a sound the dog loosed his 
grip, and, dropping to the ground, fled into the ob- 
scurity of the shop, as silently as he had launched 
himself out of it, while Kitty yet stood spell-bound, 
and before the crowd that the appeal of Mr. Arbu- 
ton’s rescuer had summoned could see what had 
happened. 

Mr. Arbuton lifted himself, and looked angrily 
round upon the gaping spectators, who began, one 
by one, to take in their heads from their windows 
and to slink back to their thresholds as if they had 
been guilty of something much worse than a desire 
to succor a human being in peril. 

“ Good heavens ! ” said Mr. Arbuton, “ what an 
abominable scene ! ” His face was deadly pale, as 
Ue turned from these insolent intruders to his de- 


NEXT MORNING. 


173 


liverer, whom he saluted, with a u Merci bien ! ” 
spoken in a cold, steady voice. Then he drew off 
his overcoat, which had been torn by the dog’s 
teeth and irreparably dishonored in the encounter. 
He looked at it shuddering, with a countenance of 
intense disgust, and made a motion as if to hurl it 
into the street. But his eye again fell upon the 
cooper’s squalid little figure, as he stood twist- 
ing his hands into his apron, and with voluble 
eagerness protesting that it was not his dog, but 
that of the English ship-captain, who had left it 
with him, and whom he had many a time besought 
to have the beast killed. Mr. Arbuton, who seemed 
not to hear what he was saying, or to be so absorbed 
in something else as not to consider whether he 
was to blame or not, broke in upon him in French : 
“You’ve done me the greatest service. I cannot 
repay you, but you must take this,” he said, as 
he thrust a bank-note into the little man’s grimy 
hand. 

“ Oh, but it is too much ’ But it is like a mon- 
sieur so brave, so ” — 

“ Hush ! It was nothing,” interrupted Mr. Ar- 
buton again. Then he threw his overcoat upon the 
man’s shoulder. “ If you will do me the pleasure 
to receive this also ? Perhaps you can make use 
of it.” 

“ Monsieur heaps me with benefits ; — monsieur ” 
— began the bewildered cooper ; but Mr. Arbu- 
ton turned abruptly away from him toward Kitty, 


174 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


who trembled at having shared the guilt of the 
other spectators, and seizing her hand, he placed 
it on his arm, where he held it close as he strode 
away, leaving his deliverer planted in the middle 
of the sidewalk and staring after him. She scarcely 
dared ask him if he were hurt, as she found herself 
doing now with a faltering voice. 

“ No, I believe not,” he said with a glance at the 
frock-coat, which was buttoned across his chest and 
was quite intact ; and still he strode on, with a 
quick glance at every threshold which did not 
openly declare a Newfoundland dog. 

It had all happened so suddenly, and in so brief 
a time, that she might well have failed to under- 
stand it, even if she had seen it all. It was barely 
intelligible to Mr. Arbuton himself, who, as Kitty 
had loitered mocking and laughing before the door 
of the shop, chanced to see the dog crouched within, 
and had only time to leap forward* and receive the 
cruel brute on his breast as it flung itself at her. 

He had not thought of the danger to himself in 
what he had done. He knew that he was unhurt, 
but he did not care for that ; he cared only that 
she was safe ; and as he pressed her hand tight 
against his heart, there passed through it a thrill 
of inexpressible tenderness, a quick, passionate sense 
of possession, a rapture as of having won her and 
made her his own forever, by saving her from that 
horrible risk. The maze in which he had but now 
dwelt concerning her seemed an obsolete frivolity 


NEXT MORNING. 


175 


of an alien past ; all the cold doubts and hindering 
scruples which he had felt from the first were gone ; 
gone all his care for his world. His world ? In 
that supreme moment, there was no world but in the 
tender eyes at which he looked down with a glance 
which she knew not how to interpret. 

She thought that his pride was deeply wounded 
at the ignominy of his adventure, — for she was 
sure he would care more for that than for the dan- 
ger, — and that if she spoke of it she might add to 
the angry pain he felt. As they hurried along she 
waited for him to speak, but he did not; though 
always, as he looked down at her with that strange 
look, he seemed about to speak. 

Presently she stopped, and, withdrawing her 
hand from his arm, she cried, “ Why, we’ve for- 
gotten my cousin ! ” 

“ Oh — yes ! ” said Mr. Arbuton with a vacant 
smile. 

Looking back they saw the colonel standing on 
the pavement near the end of the old Sault au 
Matelot, with his hands in his pockets, and stead- 
fastly staring at them. He did not relax the 
severity of his gaze when they returned to join him, 
and appeared to find little consolation in Kitty’s 
“ Oh, Dick, I forgot all about you,” given with a 
sudden, inexplicable laugh, interrupted and renewed 
as some ludicrous image seemed to come and go in 
her mind. 

“ Well, this may be very flattering, Kitty, but it 


176 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


isn’t altogether comprehensible,” said he, with a 
keen glance at both their faces. “ I don’t know 
what you’ll say to Uncle Jack. It’s not forgetting 
me alone : it’s forgetting the whole American ex- 
pedition against Quebec.” 

The colonel waited for some reply; but Kitty 
dared not attempt an explanation, and Mr. Arbu- 
ton was not the man to seem to boast of his share 
of the adventure by telling what had happened, 
even if he had cared at that moment to do so. Her 
very ignorance of what he had dared for her only 
confirmed his new sense of possession ; and, if he 
could, he would not have marred the pleasure he 
felt by making her grateful yet, sweet as that might 
be in its time. Now he liked to keep his knowl- 
edge, to have had her unwitting compassion, to hear 
her pour out her unwitting relief in this laugh, 
while he superiorly permitted it. 

“ I don’t understand this thing,” said the colonel, 
through whose dense, masculine intelligence some 
suspicions of love-making were beginning to pierce. 
But he dismissed them as absurd, and added, “ How- 
ever, I’m willing to forgive, and you’ve done the 
forgetting ; and all that I ask now is the pleasure of 
your company on the spot where Montgomery fell. 
Fanny’ll never believe I’ve found it unless you go 
with me,” he appealed, finally. 

“ Oh, we’ll go, by all means,” said Mr. Arbuton, 
unconsciously speaking, as by authority, for both. 

They came into busier streets of the Poit again 


NEXT MORNING. 


177 



the shops and warehouses on either side, the long 
row of tented booths with every kind of peasant- 
wares to sell, and the wide stairway dropping to 
the river which brought the abundance of the neigh- 
boring country to the mart. The whole place was 
alive with country-folk in carts and citizens on foot. 
At one point a gayly painted wagon was drawn up 
in the midst of a group of people to whom a quack- 
ish-faced Yankee was hawking, in his own personal 
French, an American patent-medicine, and making 
his audience giggle. Because Kitty was amused at 
this, Mr. Arbutou found it the drollest thing imagi- 
12 


178 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


nable, but saw something yet droller when she made 
the colonel look at a peasant, standing in one corner 
beside a basket of fowls, which a woman, coming 
up to buy, examined as if the provision were some 
natural curiosity, while a crowd at once gathered 
round. 

“ It requires a considerable population to make 
a bargain, up here,” remarked the colonel. “ I sup- 
pose they turn out the garrison when they sell a 
beef/’ For both buyer and seller seemed to take 
advice of the bystanders, who discussed and in- 
spected the different fowls as if nothing so novel as 
poultry had yet fallen in their way. 

At last the peasant himself took up the fowls and 
carefully scrutinized them. 

“ Those chickens, it seems, never happened to 
catch his eye before,” interpreted Kitty ; and Mr. 
Arbuton, who was usually very restive during such 
banter, smiled as if it were the most admirable fool- 
ing, or the most precious wisdom, in the world. He 
made them wait to see the bargain out, and could, 
apparently, have lingered there forever. 

But the colonel had a conscience about Mont- 
gomery, and he hurried them away, on past the 
Queen’s Wharf, and down the Cove Road to that 
point where the scarped and rugged breast of the 
cliff bears the sign, “ Here fell Montgomery,” 
though he really fell, not half-way up the height, 
but at the foot of it, where stood the battery that 
forbade his juncture with Arnold at Prescott Gata 


NEXT MORNING. 


179 


A certain wildness yet possesses the spot : the 
front of the crag, topped by the high citadel-wall, 
is so grim, and the few tough evergreens that cling 
to its clefts are torn and twisted by the winter 
blasts, and the houses are decrepit with age, show- 
ing here and there the scars of the frequent fires 
that sweep the Lower Town. 

It was quite useless : neither the memories of the 
place nor their setting were sufficient to engage the 
wayward thoughts of these curiously assorted pil- 
grims ; and the colonel, after some attempts to 
bring the matter home to himself and the others, 
was obliged to abandon Mr. Arbuton to his tender 
reveries of Kitty, and Kitty to her puzzling over 
the change in Mr. Arbuton. His complaisance 
made her uncomfortable and shy of him, it was so 
strange ; it gave her a little shiver, as if he were 
behaving undignifiedly. 

“ Well, Kitty,” said the colonel, “I reckon Un- 
cle Jack would have made more out of this than 
we’ve done. He’d have had their geology out of 
these rocks, any way.” 


IX. 


MR. ARBUTON’s INFATUATION. 

Kitty went as usual to Mrs. Ellison’s room after 
her walk, but she lapsed into a deep abstraction as 
she sat down beside the sofa. 

“ What are you smiling at ? ” asked Mrs. Elli- 
son, after briefly supporting her abstraction. 

“Was I smiling?” asked Kitty, beginning to 
laugh. “ I didn’t know it.” 

“ What has happened so very funny ? ” 

“ Why, I don't know whether it’s so very funny 
or not. I believe it isn’t funny at all.” 

“ Then what makes you laugh ? ” 

“ I don’t know. Was I ” — 

“ Now don't ask me if you were laughing, Kitty. 
It’s a little too much. You can talk or not, as you 
choose; but I don’t like to be turned into ridi- 
cule.” 

“Oh, Fanny, how can you? I was thinking 
About something very different. But I don’t see 
how I can tell you, without putting Mr. Arbuton 
in a ludicrous light, and it isn’t quite fair.” 

“ You’re very careful of him, all at once,” said 
Mrs. Ellison. “You didn’t seem disposed to spare 
him yesterday so much. I don’t understand this 
sudden conversion.” 


MR. arbuton’s infatuation. 181 

Kitty responded with a fit of outrageous laugh- 
ter. “Now I see I must tell you,” she said, and 
rapidly recounted Mr. Arbuton’s adventure. 

“ Why, I never knew anything so cool and brave, 
Fanny, and I admired him more than ever I did ; 
but then I couldn’t help seeing the other side of it, 
you know.” 

“ What other side ? I don't know.” 

“ Well, you’d have had to laugh yourself, if 
you’d seen the lordly way he dismissed the poor 
people who had come running out of their houses 
to help him, and his stateliness in rewarding that 
little cooper, and his heroic parting from his cher- 
ished overcoat, — which of course he can’t replace 
in Quebec, — and his absent-minded politeness in 
taking my hand under his arm, and marching off 
with me so magnificently. But the worst thing, 
Fanny,” — and she bowed herself under a tempest 
of long-pent mirth, — “ the worst thing was, that 
the iron you know, was the cooper’s branding-iron, 
and I had a vision of the dog carrying about on his 
nose, as long as he lived, the monogram that marks 
the cooper’s casks as holding a certain number of 
gallons ” — 

“ Kitty, don’t be — sacrilegious ! ” cried Mrs. El- 
lison. 

“ No, I’m not,” she retorted, gasping and pant- 
ing. “ I never respected Mr. Arbuton so much, 
and you say yourself I haven’t shown myself so 
careful of him before. But I never was so glad to 


182 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


Bee Dick in my life, and to have some excuse for 
laughing. I didn’t dare to speak to Mr. Arbuton 
about it, for be couldn’t, if he had tried, have let 
me laugh it out and be done with it. I trudged 
demurely along by his side, and neither of us men- 
tioned the matter to Dick,” she concluded breath- 
lessly. Then, “ T don’t know why I should tell 
you now ; it seems wicked and cruel,” she said pen- 
itently, almost pensively. 

Mrs. Ellison had not been amused. She said, 
“ Well, Kitty, in some girls I should say it was 
quite heartless to do as you’ve done.” 

“ It’s heartless in me, Fanny ; and you needn’t 
say such a thing. I’m sure I didn’t utter a sylla- 
ble to wound him, and just before that he’d been 
very disagreeable, and I forgave him because I 
thought he was mortified. And you needn’t say 
that I’ve no feeling ; ” and thereupon she rose, 
and, putting her hands into her cousin’s, “ Fanny,” 
she cried, vehemently, “ I have been heartless. I’m 
afraid I haven’t shown any sympathy or considera- 
tion. I’m afraid I must have seemed dreadfully 
callous and hard. I oughtn’t to have thought of 
anything but the danger to him ; and it seems to 
me now I scarcely thought of that at all. Oh, how 
rude it was of me to see anything funny in it! 
What can I do ? ” 

“ Don’t go crazy, at any rate, Kitty. He doesn’t 
know that you’ve been laughing about him. You 
needn’t do anything.” 


MR. arbuton’s infatuation. 183 

44 Oh yes, I need. He doesn’t know that I’ye 
been laughing about him to you ; but, don’t you 
see, I laughed when we met Dick ; and what can 
he think of that ? ” 

44 He just thinks you were nervous, I sup- 
pose.” 

44 Oh, do you suppose he does, Fanny ? Oh, I 
wish I could believe that ! Oh, I’m so horribly 
ashamed of myself ! And here yesterday I was 
criticising him for being unfeeling, and now I’ve 
been a thousand times worse than he has ever been, 
or ever could be ! Oh dear, dear, dear ! ” 

44 Kitty ! hush ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Ellison ; 44 you 
run on like a wild thing, and you’re driving me dis- 
tracted, by not being like yourself.” 

44 Oh, it’s very well for you to be so calm ; but if 
you didn’t know what to do, you wouldn’t.” 

44 Yes, I would ; I don’t, and I am.” 

44 But what shall I do ? ” And Kitty plucked 
away the hands which Fanny had been holding and 
wrung them. 44 I’ll tell you what I can do,” she 
suddenly added, while a gleam of relief dawned 
upon her face : 44 1 can bear all his disagreeable 
ways after this, as long as he stays, and not say 
anything back. Yes, I’ll put up with everything. 
I’ll be as meek ! He may patronize me and snub me 
and put me in the wrong as much as he pleases. 
And then he won’t be approaching my behavior. 
Oh, Fanny ! ” 

Upon this, Mrs. Ellison said that she was going 


184 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


to give her a good scolding for her nonsense, and 
pulled her down and kissed her, and said that she 
had not done anything, and was, nevertheless, con- 
soled at her resolve to expiate her offense by re- 
specting thenceforward Mr. Arbuton’s foibles and 
prejudices. 

It is not certain how far Kitty would have suc- 
ceeded in her good purposes : these things, so easily 
conceived, are not of such facile execution ; she 
passed a sleepless night of good resolutions and 
schemes of reparation ; but, fortunately for her, Mr. 
Arbuton’s foibles and prejudices seemed to have 
fallen into a strange abeyance. The change that 
had come upon him that day remained ; he was 
still Mr. Arbuton, but with a difference. He could 
not undo his whole inherited and educated being, 
and perhaps no chance could deeply affect it with- 
out destroying the man. He continued hopelessly 
superior to Colonel and Mrs. Ellison ; but it is not 
easy to love a woman and not seek, at least before 
marriage, to please those dear to her. Mr. Arbu- 
ton had contested his passion at every advance ; he 
had firmly set his face against the fancy that, at 
the beginning, invested this girl with a charm ; ^ he 
had only done the things afterwards that mere civ- 
ilization required ; he had suffered torments of 
doubt concerning her fitness for himself and his 
place in society ; he was not sure yet that her un- 
known relations were not horribly vulgar people • 
even yet, he was almost wholly ignorant of the cir- 


MR. ARBUTON’S INFATUATION. 


185 


cumstances and conditions of her life. But now he 
saw her only in the enrapturing light of his daring 
for her sake, of a self-devotion that had seemed to 
make her his own ; and he behaved toward her 
with a lover’s self-forgetfulness, — or something 
like it : say a perfect tolerance, a tender patience, 
in which it would have been hard to detect the 
lurking shadow of condescension. 

lie was fairly domesticated with the family. 
Mrs. Ellison’s hurt, in spite of her many impru- 
dences, was decidedly better, and sometimes she 
made a ceremony of being helped down from her 
room to dinner ; but she always had tea beside her 
sofa, and he with the others drank it there. Few 
hours of the day passed in which they did not meet 
in that easy relation which establishes itself among 
people sojourning in summer idleness under the 
same roof. In the morning he saw the young girl 
fresh and glad as any flower of the garden beneath 
her window, while the sweet abstraction of her 
maiden dreams yet hovered in her eyes. At night 
he sat with her beside the lamp whose light, illum- 
ing a little world within, shut out the great world 
outside, and seemed to be the soft effulgence of her 
presence, as she sewed, or knit, or read, — a heav- 
enly spirit of home. Sometimes he heard her talk- 
ing with her cousin, or lightly laughing after he 
had said good night ; once, when he woke, she 
seemed to be looking out of her window across the 
moonlight in the Ursulines’ Garden while she sang 


186 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


a fragment of song. To meet her on the stairs or 
in the narrow entries ; or to encounter her at the 
doors, and make way for her to pass with a jest and 
blush and flutter ; to sit down at table with her 
three times a day, — was a potent witchery. There 
was a rapture in her shawl flung over the back of 
her chair ; her gloves, lying light as fallen leaves on 
the table, and keeping the shape of her hands, were 
full of winning character ; and all the more unac- 
countably they touched his heart because they had 
a certain careless, sweet shabbiness about the finger- 
tips. 

He found himself hanging upon her desultory 
talk with Fanny about the set of things and the 
agreement of colors. There was always more or 
less of this talk going on, whatever the main topic 
was, for continual question arose in the minds of one 
or other lady concerning those adaptations of Mrs. 
Ellison’s finery to the exigencies of Kitty’s daily 
life. They pleased their innocent hearts with the 
secrecy of the affair, which, in the concealments it 
required, the sudden difficulties it presented, and 
the guiltless equivocations it inspired, had the 
excitement of intrigue. Nothing could have been 
more to the mind of Mrs. Ellison than to deck 
Kitty for this perpetual masquerade ; and, since 
the things were very pretty, and Kitty was a girl 
in every motion of her being, I do not see how any- 
thing could have delighted her more than to weai 
them. Their talk effervesced with the delicious 


MR. ARBUTON’S INFATUATION. 


187 


consciousness that he could not dream of what was 
going on, and bubbled over with mysterious jests 
and laughter, which sometimes he feared to be at 
Ids expense, and so joined in, and made them 
laugh the more at his misconception. He went 
and came among them at will ; he had but to tap 
at Mrs. Ellison’s door, and some voice of unaffected 
cordiality welcomed him in ; he had but to ask, 
and Kitty was frankly ready for any of those strolls 
about Quebec in which most of their waking hours 
were dreamed away. 

The gray Lady of the North cast her spell about 
them, — the freshness of her mornings, the still 
heat of her middays, the slant, pensive radiance 
of her afternoons, and the pale splendor of her 
auroral nights. Never was city so faithfully ex- 
plored ; never did city so abound in objects of in- 
terest ; for Kitty’s love of the place was boundless, 
and his love for her was inevitable friendship with 
this adoptive patriotism. 

“ I didn’t suppose you Western people cared for 
these things,” he once said ; “I thought your minds 
were set on things new and square.” 

“ But how could you think so ? ” replied Kitty, 
tolerantly. “ It’s because we have so many new 
&nd square things that we like the old crooked 
ones. I do believe I should enjoy Europe even 
better than you. There’s a forsaken farm-house 
near Eriecreek, dropping to pieces amongst its wild- 
grown sweet-briers and quince-bushes, that I used 


188 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


to think a wonder of antiquity because it was built 
in 1815. Can’t you imagine how I must feel in 
a city like this, that was founded nearly three 
centuries ago, and has suffered so many sieges and 
captures, and looks like pictures of those beautiful 
old towns I can never see ? ” 

“ Oh, perhaps you will see them some day ! ” he 
said, touched by her fervor. 

“ I don’t ask it at present : Quebec’s enough. 
Pm in love with the place. I wish I never had 
to leave it. There isn’t a crook, or a turn, or a tin- 
roof, or a dormer-window, or a gray stone in it that 
isn’t precious.” 

Mr. Arbuton laughed. “ Well, you shall be 
sovereign lady of Quebec for me. Shall we have 
the English garrison turned out ? ” 

“ No; not unless you can bring 
back Montcalm’s men to take their 
places.” 

This might be as they sauntered 
out of one of the city gates, and 
strayed through the Lower Town 
till they should chance upon some 
poor, bare-interiored church, with 
a few humble worshippers adoring 
their Saint, with his lamps alight 
before his picture ; or as they passed 
some high convent-wall, and caught the strange, me- 
tallic clang of the nuns’ voices singing their hymns 
within. Sometimes they whiled away the hours on 



MR. ARBUTON’S INFATUATION. 


189 


the Esplanade, breathing its pensive sentiment of 
neglect and incipient decay, and pacing up and 
down over the turf athwart the slim shadows of the 
poplars ; or, with comfortable indifference to i.he 
local observances, sat in talk on the carriage of one 
of the burl)*, uncared-for guns, while the spider wove 
his web across the mortar’s mouth, and the grass 
nodded above the tumbled pyramids of shot, and 
the children raced up and down, and the nursery- 
maids were wooed of the dapper sergeants, and the 
red-coated sentry loitered lazily to and fro before his 
box. On the days of the music, they listened to 
the band in the Governor’s Garden, and watched 
the fine world of the old capital in flirtation with 
the blond- whiskered officers ; and on pleasant nights 
they mingled with the citizen throng that filled the 
Durham Terrace, while the river shaped itself in 
the lights of its shipping, and the Lower Town, 
with its lamps, lay, like a nether firmament, two 
hundred feet below them, and Point Levis glittered 
and sparkled on the thither shore, and in the 
northern sky the aurora throbbed in swift pulsa- 
tions of violet and crimson. They liked to climb 
the Break-Neck Steps at Prescott Gate, dropping 
from the Upper to the Lower Town, which re- 
minded Mr. Arbuton of Naples and Trieste, and 
took Kitty with the unassociated picturesqueness 
of their odd shops and taverns, and their lofty 
windows green with house-plants. They would 
stop and look up at the geraniums and fuchsias, 


190 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


and fall a- thinking of far different things, and the 
friendly, unbusy people would come to their doors 
and look up with them. They recognized the 
handsome, blond young man, and the pretty, gray- 
eyed girl ; for people in Quebec have time to note 
strangers who linger there, and Kitty and Mr. Ar- 
buton had come to be well-known figures, different 
from the fleeting tourists on their rounds ; and, 
indeed, as sojourners they themselves perceived 
their poetic distinction from mere birds of pas- 
sage. 

Indoors they resorted much to the little entry- 
window looking out on the Ursulines’ Garden. 
Two chairs stood confronted there, and it was hard 
for either of the young people to pass them with- 
out sinking a moment into one of them, and this 
appeared always to charm another presence into 
the opposite chair. There they often lingered in 
the soft forenoons, talking in desultory phrase of 
things far and near, or watching, in long silences, 
the nuns pacing up and down in the garden below, 
and waiting for the pensive, slender nun, and the 
stout, jolly nun whom Kitty had adopted, and 
whoo she had gayly interpreted to him as an alle- 
gory of Life in their quaint inseparableness ; and 
they played that the influence of one or other nun 
was in the ascendant, according as their own talk 
was gay or sad. In their relation, people are not 
so different from children ; they like the same thing 
over and over again ; they like it the better the less 
it is in itself. 


MR. ARBUTON’S INFATUATION. 


191 


At times Kitty would come with a book in her 
hand (one finger shut in to keep the place), — 
some latest novel, or a pirated edition of Long- 
fellow, recreantly purchased at a Quebec bookstore ; 
and then Mr. Arbuton must ask to see it ; and he 
read romance or poetry to her by the hour. He 
showed to as much advantage as most men do in 
the serious follies of wooing; and an influence 
which he could not defy, or would not, shaped him 
to all the sweet, absurd de- 
mands of the affair. From 
time to time, recollecting 
himself, and trying to look 
consequences in the face, he 
gently turned the talk upon 
Eriecreek, and endeavored to 
possess himself of some intel- 
ligible image of the place, and 
of Kitty’s home and friends. 

Even then, the present was 
sc fair and full of content, that his thoughts, when 
they reverted to the future, no longer met the obsta- 
cles that had made him recoil from it before. What- 
ever her past had been, he could find some way to 
weaken the ties that bound her to it ; a year or two 
of Europe would leave no trace of Eriecreek : with- 
out effort of his, her life would adapt itself to his 
own, and cease to be a part of the lives of those peo- 
ple there ; again and again his amiable imaginations 
— they were scarcely intents — accomplished them- 



192 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


selves in many a swift, fugitive reverie, while the 
days went by, and the shadow of the ivy in the 
window at which they sat fell, in moonlight and 
sunlight, upon Kitty’s cheeks, and the fuchsia kissed 
her hair with its purple and crimson blossom* 


X. 


MR. ARBUTON SPEAKS. 

Mrs. Ellison was almost well ; she had already 
been shopping twice in the Rue Fabrique, and her 
recovery was now chiefly retarded by the dress- 
maker’s delays in making up a silk too pre- 
cious to be risked in the piece with the customs 
officers, at the frontier. Moreover, although the 
colonel was beginning to chafe, she was not loath to 
linger yet a few days for the sake of an affair to 
which her suffering had been a willing sacrifice. In 
return for her indefatigable self-devotion, Kitty had 
lately done very little. She ungratefully shrunk 
more and more from those confidences to which her 
cousin’s speeches covertly invited ; she openly re- 
sisted open attempts upon her knowledge of facts. 
If she was not prepared to confess everything to 
Fanny, it was perhaps because it was all so very 
little, or because a young girl has not, or ought not 
to have, a mind in certain matters, or else knows it 
not, till it is asked her by the one first authorized 
to learn it. The dream in which she lived was flat- 
tering and fair ; and it wholly contented her imag- 
ination while it lulled her consciousness. It moved 
from phase to phase without the harshness of real- 
12 


194 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


ity, and was apparently allied neither to the future 
nor to the past. She herself seemed to have no 
more fixity or responsibility in it than the heroine 
of a romance. 

As their last week in Quebec drew to its close, 
only two or three things remained for them to do 
as tourists ; and chief among the few unvisited 
shrines of sentiment was the site of the old Jesuit 
mission at Sillery. 

“ It won’t do not to see that, Kitty,” said Mrs. 
Ellison, who, as usual, had arranged the details of 
the excursion, and now announced them. “ It’s 
one of the principal things here, and your Uncle 
Jack would never be satisfied if you missed it. 
In fact, it’s a shame to have left it so long. I 
can’t go with you, for I’m saving up my strength 
for our picnic at Chateau-Bigot to-morrow ; and I 
want you, Kitty, to see that the colonel sees every- 
thing. I’ve had trouble enough, goodness knows, 
getting the facts together for him.” This was as 
Kitty and Mr. Arbuton sat waiting in Mrs. Elli- 
son’s parlor for the delinquent colonel, who had 
just stepped round to the Hotel St. Louis and was 
to be back presently. But the moment of his re- 
turn passed ; a quarter-hour of grace ; a half-hour 
of grim magnanimity, — and still no colonel. Mrs. 
Ellison began by saying that it was perfectly abom- 
inable, and left herself, in a greater extremity, with 
nothing more forcible to add than that it was toe 
provoking. “ It’s getting so late now,” she said at 


MR. ARBUTON SPEAKS. 


195 


last, “ that it’s no use waiting any longer, if you 
mean to go at all, to-day ; and to-day’s the only 
day you can go. There, you’d better drive on with- 
out him. I can’t bear to have you miss it.” And, 
thus adjured, the younger people rose and went. 

When the high-born Noel Brulart de Sillery, 
Knight of Malta and courtier of Marie de Medicis, 
turned from the vanities of this world and became 
a priest, Canada was the fashionable mission of the 
day, and the noble neophyte signalized his self-re- 
nunciation by giving of his great wealth for the 
conversion of the Indian heathen. He supplied the 
Jesuits with money to maintain a religious estab- 
lishment near Quebec ; and the settlement of red 
Christians took his musical name, which the region 
still keeps. It became famous at once as the first 
residence of the Jesuits and the nuns of the Hotel 
Dieu, who wrought and suffered for religion there 
amidst the terrors of pestilence, Iroquois, and win- 
ter. It was the scene of miracles and martyrdoms, 
and marvels of many kinds, and the centre of the 
missionary efforts among the Indians. Indeed, few 
events of the picturesque early history of Quebec 
left it untouched ; and it is worthy to be seen, no 
less for the wild beauty of the spot than for its he- 
roical memories. About a league from the city, 
where the irregular wall of rock on which Quebec 
is built recedes from the river, and a grassy space 
stretches between the tide and the foot of the woody 
steep, the old mission and the Indian village once 


196 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


stood ; and to this day there yet stands the stalwart 
frame of the first Jesuit Residence, modernized, of 
course, and turned to secular uses, but firm as of 
old, and good for a century to come. All around 
is a world of lumber, and rafts of vast extent cover 
the face of the waters in the ample cove, — one of 
many that indent the shores of the St. Lawrence. 
A careless village straggles along the roadside and 
the river’s margin ; huge lumber-ships are loading 
for Europe in the stream ; a town shines out of the 
woods on the opposite shore ; nothing but a friendly 
climate is needed to make this one of the most 
charming scenes the heart could imagine. 

Kitty and Mr. Arbuton drove out towards Sil- 
lery by the St. Louis Road, and already the jealous 
foliage that hides the pretty villas and stately places 
of that aristocratic suburb was tinged in here and 
there a bough with autumnal crimson or yellow ; in 
the meadows here and there a vine ran red along 
the grass ; the loath choke-cherries were ripening in 
the fence corners ; the air was full of the pensive 
jargoning of the crickets and grasshoppers, and all 
the subtle sentiment of the fading summer. Their 
hearts were open to every dreamy influence of the 
time ; their driver understood hardly any English, 
and their talk might safely be made up of those 
harmless egotisms which young people exchange, — 
those strains of psychological autobiography which 
mark advancing intimacy and in which they appear 
to each other the most uncommon persons that ever 


MR. ARBUTON SPEAKS. 


197 


lived, and their experiences and emotions and ideas 
are the more surprisingly unique because exactly 
alike. 

It seemed a very short league to Sillery when 
they left the St. Louis Road, and the driver turned 
his horses’ heads towards the river, down the wind- 
ing sylvan way that descended to the shore ; and 
they had not so much desire, after all, to explore 
the site of the old mission. Nevertheless, they got 
out and visited the little space once occupied by the 
Jesuit chapel, where its foundations may yet be 
traced in the grass, and they read the inscription 
on the monument lately raised by the parish to the 
memory of the first Jesuit missionary to Canada, 
who died at Sillery. Then there seemed nothing 
more to do but admire the mighty rafts and piles of 
lumber ; but their show of interest in the local ce- 
lebrity had stirred the pride of Sillery, and a little 
French boy entered the chapel-yard, and gave Kitty 
a pamphlet history of the place, for which he would 
not suffer himself to be paid ; and a sweet-faced 
young Englishwoman came out of the house across 
the way, and hesitatingly asked if they would not 
like to see the Jesuit Residence. She led them in- 
doors, and showed them how the ancient edifice had 
been encased by the modern house, and bade them 
note, from the deep shelving window-seats, that the 
stone walls were three feet thick. The rooms were 
low-ceiled and quaintly shaped, but they borrowed 
a certain grandeur from this massiveness ; and it 


198 


A. CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


was easy to figure the priests in black and the 
nuns in gray in those dim chambers, which now a 
life so different inhabited. Behind the house was 
a plot of grass, and thence the wooded hill rose 
steep. 

“But come up-stairs,” said the ardent little 
hostess to Kitty, when her husband came in, and 
had civilly welcomed the strangers, “ and I’ll show 
you my own room, that’s as old as any.” 

They left the two men below, and mounted to a 
large room carpeted and furnished in modern taste. 
“ We had to take down the old staircase,” she con- 
tinued, “to get our bedstead up,” — a magnificent 
structure which she plainly thought well worth the 
sacrifice ; and then she pointed out divers remnants 
of the ancient building. “ It’s a queer place to 
live in ; but we’re only here for the summer ; ” and 
she went on to explain, with a pretty naivete , how 
her husband’s^business brought him to Sillery from 
Quebec in that season. They were descending the 
stairs, Kitty foremost, as she added, “ This is my 
first housekeeping, you know, and of course it 
would be strange anywhere ; but you can’t think 
how funny it is here. I suppose,” she said, shyly, 
but as if her confidences merited some return, while 
Kitty stepped from the stairway face to face with 
Mr. Arbuton, who was about to follow them, with 
the lady’s husband, — “I suppose this is your wed- 
ding-journey.” 

A quick alarm flamed through the young girl 


MR. ARBUTON SPEAKS. 


199 


and burned out of her glowing cheeks. This pleas- 
ant masquerade of hers must look to others like 
the most intentional love-making between her and 
Mr. Arbuton, — no dreams either of them, nor fig- 
ures in a play, nor characters in a romance ; nay, 
on one spectator, at least, it had shed the soft lustre 
of a honeymoon. How could it be otherwise ? 
Here on this fatal line of wedding-travel, — so com- 
mon that she remembered Mrs. March half apolo- 
gized for making it her first tour after marriage, — 
how could it happen but that two young people to- 
gether as they were should be taken for bride and 
bridegroom ? Moreover, and worst of all, he must 
have heard that fatal speech ! 

He was pale, if she was flushed, and looked grave, 
as she fancied ; but he passed on up the stairs, and 
she sat down to wait for his return. 

“ I used to notice so many couples from the 
States when we lived in the city,” continued the 
hospitable mistress of the house, u but I don’t think 
they often came out to Sillery. In fact, you’re the 
only pair that’s come this summer ; and so, when 
you seemed interested about the mission, I thought 
you wouldn’t mind if I spoke to you, and asked you 
in to see the house. Most of the Americans stay 
long enough to visit the citadel, and the Plains of 
Abraham, and the Falls at Montraorenci, and then 
they go away. I should think they’d be tired al- 
ways doing the same things. To be sure, they’re 
always different people.” 


200 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


It was unfair to let her entertainer go on talking 
for quantity in this way ; and Kitty said how glad 
she was to see the old Residence, and that she 
should always be grateful to her for asking them in 
She did not disabuse her of her error ; it cost less 
to leave it alone ; and when Mr. Arbuton reap- 
peared, she took leave of those kind people with a 
sort of remote enjoyment of the wife’s mistaken- 
ness concerning herself. Yet, as the young matron 
and her husband stood beside the carriage repeating 
their adieux, she would fain have prolonged the part- 
ing forever, so much she dreaded to be left alone 
with Mr. Arbuton. But, left alone with him, her 
spirits violently rose ; and as they drove along 
under the shadow of the cliff, she descanted in her 
liveliest strain upon the various interests of the 
way ; she dwelt on the beauty of the wide, still 
river, with the ships at anchor in it ; she praised 
the lovely sunset-light on the other shore ; she com- 
mented lightly on the village, through which they 
passed, with the open doors and the suppers frying 
on the great stoves set into the partition-walls of 
each cleanly home ; she made him look at the two 
great stairways that climb the cliff from the lum- 
ber-yards to the Plains of Abraham, and the army 
of laborers, each with his empty dinner-pail in 
hand, scaling the once difficult heights on their way 
home to the suburb of St. Roch ; she did whatever 
*he could to keep the talk to herself and yet away 
from herself. Part of the way the village was 


MR ARBUTON SPEAKS. 


201 


French and neat and pleasant, then it groveled 
with Irish people, and ceased to be a tolerable 
theme for discourse ; and so at last the silence 
against which she had battled fell upon them and 
deepened like a spell that she could not break. 

It would have been better for Mr. Arbuton’s 
success just then if he had not broken it. But 
failure was not within his reckoning ; for he had so 
long regarded this young girl de haut en has, to say 
it brutally, that he could not imagine she should 
feel any doubt in accepting him. Moreover, a 
magnanimous sense of obligation mingled with his 
confident love, for she must have known that he had 
overheard that speech at the Residence. Perhaps 
he let this feeling color his manner, however faintly. 
He lacked the last fine instinct ; he could not for- 
bear ; and he spoke while all her nerves and flutter- 
ing pulses cried him mercy. 


XI. 


KITTY ANSWERS. 

It was dimmest twilight when Kitty entered Mrs. 
Ellison’s room and sank down on the first chair in 
silence. 

“ The colonel met a friend at the St. Louis, and 
forgot about the expedition, Kitty,” said Fanny, 
“ and he only came in half an hour ago. But it’s 
just as well ; I know you’ve had a splendid time. 
Where’s Mr. Arbuton ? ” 

Kitty burst into tears. 

“ Why, has anything happened to him ? ” cried 
Mrs. Ellison, springing towards her. 

“ To him ? No ! What should happen to him ? ” 
Kitty demanded with an indignant accent. 

“ Well, then, has anything happened to you ? ” 

“ I don’t know if you can call it happening. But 
I suppose you’ll be satisfied now, Fanny. He’s 
offered himself to me.” Kitty uttered the last 
words with a sort of violence, as if since the fact 
must be stated, she wished it to appear in the sharp- 
est relief. 

“ Oh dear ! ” said Mrs. Ellison, not so well satis- 
fied as the successful match-maker ought to be. 
So long as it was a marriage in the abstract, she 


KITTY ANSWERS. 


203 


had never ceased to desire it ; but the actual 
union of Kitty and this Mr. Arbuton, of whom, 
really, they knew so little, and of whom, if she 
searched her heart, she had as little liking as 
knowledge, it was another affair. Mrs. Ellison 
trembled at her triumph, and began to think that 
failure would have been easier to bear. Were they 
in the least suited to each other? Would she like 
to see poor Kitty chained for life to that impassive 
egotist, whose very merits were repellent, and whose 
modesty even seemed to convict and snub you? 
Mrs. Ellison was not able to put the matter to her- 
self with moderation, either way ; doubtless she did 
Mr. Arbuton injustice now. “ Did you accept 
him ? ” she whispered, feebly. 

“ Accept him ? ” repeated Kitty. “ No! ” 

“ Oh dear ! ” again sighed Mrs. Ellison, feeling 
that this was scarcely better, and not daring to ask 
further. 

“ I’m dreadfully perplexed, Fanny,” said Kitty, 
after waiting for the questions which did not come, 
“ and I wish you’d help me think.” 

“ I will, darling. But I don’t know that I’ll be 
of much use. I begin to think I’m not very good 
at thinking.” 

Kitty, who longed chiefly to get the situation 
more distinctly before herself, gave no heed to this 
confession, but went on to rehearse the whole affair. 
The twilight lent her its veil ; and in the kindly 
obscurity she gathered courage to face all the facts, 
and even to find what was droll in them. 


204 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


“ It was very solemn, of course, and I was fright- 
ened ; but I tried to keep my wits about me, and 
not to say yes, simply because that was the easiest 
thing. I told him that I didn’t know, — and I 
don’t ; and that I must have time to think, — and 
I must. He was very ungenerous, and said he had 
hoped I had already had time to think ; and he 
couldn’t seem to understand, or else I couldn’t very 
well explain, how it had been with me all along.” 

“ He might certainly say you had encouraged 
him,” Mrs. Ellison remarked, thoughtfully. 

“ Encouraged him, Fanny ? How can you accuse 
me of such indelicacy ? ” 

“Encouraging isn’t indelicacy. The gentlemen 
have to be encouraged, or of course they’d never 
have any courage. They’re so timid, naturally.” 

“ I don’t think Mr. Arbuton is very timid. He 
seemed to think that he had only to ask as a mat- 
ter of form, and I had no business to say anything. 
What has he ever done for me ? And hasn’t he 
often been intensely disagreeable ? He oughtn’t to 
have spoken just after overhearing what he did. It 
was horrid to do so. He was very obtuse, too, not to 
see that girls can’t always be so certain of them- 
selves as men, or, if they are, don’t know they are 
as soon as they’re asked.” 

“ Yes,” interrupted Mrs. Ellison, “ that’s the way 
with girls. I do believe that most of them — when 
they’re young like you, Kitty — never think of mar- 
riage as the end of their flirtations. They’d just 


KITTY ANSWERS. 


205 


like the attentions and the romance to go on for- 
ever, and never turn into anything more serious ; 
and they’re not to blame for that, though they do 
get blamed for it.” 

“ Certainly,” assented Kitty, eagerly, “ that’s it ; 
that’s just what I was saying ; that’s the very rea- 
son why girls must have time to make up their 
minds. You had, I suppose.” 

“ Yes, two minutes. Poor Dick was going back 
to his regiment, and stood with his watch in his 
hand. I said no, and called after him to correct 
myself. But, Kitty, if the romance had happened 
to stop without his saying anything, you wouldn’t 
have liked that either, would you ? ” 

“ No,” faltered Kitty, “ I suppose not.” 

“Well, then, don’t you see? That’s a great 
point in his favor. How much time did you want, 
or did he give you ? ” 

“I said I should answer before we left Quebec,” 
answered Kitty, with a heavy sigh. 

“ Don’t you know what to say now ? ” 

“ I can’t tell. That’s what I want you to help 
me think out.” 

Mrs. Ellison was silent for a moment before she 
said, “ Well, then, I suppose we shall have to go 
back to the very beginning.” 

“ Yes,” assented Kitty, faintly. 

“You did have a sort of fancy for him the first 
time you saw him, didn’t you ? ” asked Mrs. Elli- 
son, coaxingly, while forcing herself to be system- 


206 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


atic and coherent, by a mental strain of which no 
idea can be given. 

“ Yes,” said Kitty, yet more faintly, adding, 
“ but I can’t tell just what sort of a fancy it was. 
I suppose I admired him for being handsome and 
stylish, and for having such exquisite manners.” 

“ Go on,” said Mrs. Ellison. “ And after you 
got acquainted with him ? ” 

“ Why, you know we’ve talked that over once 
already, Fanny.” 

“ Yes, but we oughtn’t to skip anything now,” 
replied Mrs. Ellison, in a tone of judiciaJ accuracy 
which made Kitty smile. 

But she quickly became serious again, and said, 
“ Afterwards I couldn’t tell whether to like him or 
not, or whether he wanted me to. I think he acted 
very strangely for a person in — love. I used to 
feel so troubled and oppressed when I was with 
him. He seemed always to be making himself 
agreeable under protest.” 

“ Perhaps that was just your imagination, Kitty.” 

“Perhaps it was; but it troubled me just the 
the same.” 

“ Well, and then ? ” 

“ Well, and then after that day of the Mont- 
gomery expedition, he seemed to change altogether, 
and to try always to be pleasant, and to do every- 
thing he could to make me like him. I don’t know 
how to account for it. Ever since then he’s been 
extremely careful of me, and behaved — of course 


KITTY ANSWERS. 


207 


without knowing it — as if I belonged to him al- 
ready. Or may be I’ve imagined that too. It’s 
very hard to tell what has really happened the last 
two weeks.’’ 

Kitty was silent, and Mrs. Ellison did not speak 
at once. Presently she asked, “ Was his acting as 
if you belonged to him disagreeable ? ” 

“ I can’t tell. I think it was rather presuming. 
I don’t know why he did it.” 

“ Do you respect him ? ” demanded Mrs. Elli- 
son. 

“ Why, Fanny, I’ve always told you that I did 
respect some things in him.” 

Mrs. Ellison had the facts before her, and it 
rested upon her to sum them up, and do something 
with them. She rose to a sitting posture, and con- 
fronted her task. 

“Well, Kitty, I’ll tell you: I don’t really know 
what to think. But I can say this: if you liked 
him at first, and then didn’t like him, and after- 
wards he made himself more agreeable, and you 
didn’t mind his behaving as if you belonged to him, 
and you respected him, but after all didn’t think 
him fascinating ” — 

“ He is fascinating — in a kind of way. He was, 
from the beginning. In a story his cold, snubbing, 
putting-down ways would have been perfectly fas- 
cinating.” 

•• Then why didn’t you take him ? ” 

“ Because,” answered Kitty, between laughing 


208 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


and crying, “it isn’t a story, and I don’t know 
whether I like him.” 

“ But do you think you might get to like him ? ” 

“ I don’t know. His asking brings back all the 
doubts I ever had of him, and that I’ve been for- 
getting the past two weeks. I can’t tell whether I 
like him or not. If I did, shouldn’t I trust him 
more ? ” 

“ Well, whether you are in love or not, I’ll tell 
you what you are, Kitty,” cried Mrs. Ellison, pro- 
voked with her indecision, and yet relieved that the 
worst, whatever it was, was postponed thereby for 
a day or two. 

“ What?” 

“ You’re ” — 

But at this important juncture the colonel came 
lounging in, and Kitty glided out of the room. 

“ Richard,” said Mrs. Ellison, seriously, and in a 
tone implying that it was the colonel’s fault, as 
usual, “ you know what has happened, 1 suppose.” 

“No, my dear, I don’t ; but no matter : I will 
presently, I dare say.” 

“ Oh, I wish for once you wouldn’t be so flip- 
pant. Mr. Arbuton has offered himself to Kitty.” 

Colonel Ellison gave a quick, sharp whistle of 
amazement, but trusted himself to nothing more 
articulate. 

“Yes,” said his wife, responding to the whistle, 
“ and it makes me perfectly wretched.” 

“ Why, I thought you liked him.” 


KITTY ANSWERS. 


209 


“ I didn’t like him ; but I thought it would be an 
excellent thing for Kitty.” 

“ And won’t it ? ” 

“ She doesn’t know.” 

“ Doesn’t know ? ” 

“ No.” 

The colonel was silent, while Mrs. Ellison stated 
the case in full, and its pending uncertainty. Then 
he exclaimed vehemently, as if his amazement bad 
been growing upon him, “ This is the most aston- 
ishing thing in the world ! Who would ever have 
dreamt of that young iceberg being in love ? ” 

“ Haven’t I told you all along he was ? ” 

“ Oh yes, certainly ; but that might be taken 
either way, you know. You would discover the 
tender passion in the eye of a potato.” 

“ Colonel Ellison,” said Fanny with sternness, 
“ why do you suppose he’s been hanging about us 
for the last four weeks ? Why should he have 
stayed in Quebec ? Do you think he pitied me, or 
found you so very agreeable ? ” 

“ Well, I thought he found us just tolerable, and 
was interested in the place.” 

Mrs. Ellison made no direct reply to this pitiable 
speech, but looked a scorn which, happily for the 
colonel, the darkness hid. Presently she said that 
bats did not express the blindness of men, for any 
bat could have seen what was going on. 

“ Why,” remarked the colonel, “ I did have a 
momentary suspicion that day of the Montgomery 
14 


210 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


business ; they both looked very confused, when I 
saw them at the end of that street, and neither of 
them had anything to say ; but that was accounted 
for by what you told me afterwards about his ad- 
venture. At the time I didn’t pay much attention 
to the matter. The idea of his being in love 
seemed too ridiculous.” 

“Was it ridiculous for you to be in love with 
me?” 

“ No ; and yet I can’t praise my condition for its 
wisdom, Fanny.” 

“ Yes ! that’s like men. As soon as one of them 
is safely married, he thinks all the love-making in 
the world has been done forever, and he can’t con- 
ceive of two young people taking a fancy to each 
other.” 

“ That’s something so, Fanny. But granting — 
for the sake of argument merely — that Boston has 
been asking Kitty to marry him, and she doesn’t 
know whether she wants him, what are we to do 
about it ? I don’t like him well enough to plead 
his cause ; do you ? When does Kitty think she’ll 
be able to make up her mind ? ” 

“ She’s to let him know before we leave.” 

The colonel laughed. “ And so he’s to hang 
about here on uncertainties for two whole days ! 
That is rather rough on him. Fanny, what made 
you so eager for this business ? ” 

“Eager? I wasn't eager.” 

“ Well, then, — reluctantly acquiescent ? ” 


KITTY ANSWERS. 


211 


“ Why, she’s so literary and that.” 

“ And what ? ” 

“ How insulting ! — Intellectual, and so on ; and 
I thought she would be just fit to live in a place 
where everybody is literary and intellectual. That 
is, I thought that, if I thought anything.” 

“Well,” said the colonel, “you may have been 
right on the whole, but I don’t think Kitty is show- 
ing any particular force of mind, just now, that 
would fit ljer to live in Boston. My opinion is, that 
it’s ridiculous for her to keep him in suspense. 
She might as well answer him first as last. She’s 
putting herself under a kind of obligation by her 
delay. I’ll talk to her ” — 

“ If you do, you’ll kill her. You don’t know 
how she’s wrought up about it.” 

“ Oh well, I’ll be careful of her sensibilities. 
It’s my duty, to speak with her. I’m here in the 
place of a parent. Besides, don’t I know Kitty ? 
I’ve almost brought her up.” 

“ Maybe you’re right. You’re all so queer that 
perhaps you’re right. Only, do be careful, Rich- 
ard. You must approach the matter very deli- 
cately, — indirectly, you know. Girls are different, 
remember, from young men, and you mustn’t 
be blunt. Do manoeuvre a little, for once in your 
life.” 

“ All right, Fanny ; you needn’t be afraid of my 
doing anything awkward or sudden. I’ll go to 
her room pretty soon, after she is quieted down. 


212 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


and have a good, calm old fatherly conversation 
with her.” 

The colonel was spared this errand; for Kitty 

had left some of her things on Fanny’s table, and 

now came back for them with a lamp in her hand. 

Her averted face showed the marks of weeping ; 

the corners of her firm-set lips were downward 

bent, as if some resolution which she had taken 

were very painful. This the anxious Fanny saw ; 

and she made a gesture to the colonel which any 

woman would have understood to enjoin silence, or, 

at least, the utmost caution and tenderness of 

* 

speech. The colonel summoned his finesse and said, 
cheerily, “ Well, Kitty, what’s Boston been saying 
to you ? ” 

Mrs. Ellison fell back upon her sofa 2,s if shot, 
and placed her hand over her face. 

Kitty seemed not to hear her cousin. Having 
gathered up her things, she bent an unmoved face 
and an unseeing gaze full upon him, and glided 
from the room without a word. 

“ Well, upon my soul,” cried the colonel, “this 
is a pleasant, nightmarish, sleep-walking, Lady- 
Macbethish little transaction. Confound it, Fanny ! 
this comes of your wanting me to manoeuvre. If 
you’d let me come straight at the subject, — like a 
man ” — 

“ Please , Richard, don’t say anything more now,” 
pleaded Mrs. Ellison in a broken voice. “ Yon 
can’t help it, I know ; and I must do the best I can, 


KITTY ANSWERS. 


213 


under the circumstances. Do go a way for a little 
while, darling ! Oh dear ! ” 

As for Kitty, when she had got out of the room 
in that phantasmal fashion, she dimly recalled, 
through the mists of her own trouble, the colonel’s 
dismay at her so glooming upon him, and began to 
think that she had used poor Dick more tragically 
than she need, and so began to laugh softly to her- 
self ; but while she stood there at the entry window 
a moment, laughing in the moonlight, that made 
her lamp- flame thin, and painted her face with its 
pale lustre, Mr. Arbuton came down the attic stair- 
way. He was not a man of quick fancies ; but to 
one of even slower imagination and of calmer mood, 
she might very well have seemed unreal, the crea- 
ture of a dream, fantastic, intangible, insensible, 
arch, not wholly without some touch of the malign. 
In his heart he groaned over her beauty as if she 
were lost to him forever in this elfish transfigura- 
tion. 

“ Miss Ellison ! ” he scarcely more than whis- 
pered. 

“ You ought not to speak to me now,” she an- 
swered, gravely. 

“ I know it ; but I could not help it. For heav- 
en’s sake, do not let it tell against me. I wished 
to ask if I should not see you to-morrow ; to beg 
that all might go on as had been planned, and as 
if nothing had been said to-day.” 

“ It’ll be very strange,” said Kitty. “ My 





214 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE, 


cousins know everything now. How can we meet 
before them ? ” 

“ I’m not going away without an answer, and we 
can’t remain here without meeting. It will be less 
strange if we let everything take its course.” 


“ Thanks.” 

He looked strangely humbled, but even more be- 
wildered than humbled. 

She listened while he descended the steps, un- 
bolted the street door, and closed it behind him. 
Then she passed out of the moonlight into her own 
room, whose close-curtained space the lamp filled 
with its ruddy glow, and revealed her again, no 
malicious sprite, but a very puzzled, conscientious, 
anxious young girl. 

Of one thing, at least, she was clear. It had all 
come about through misunderstanding, through his 
taking her to be something that she was not ; for 
she was certain that Mr. Arbuton was of too worldly 
a spirit to choose, if he had known, a girl of such 
origin and lot as she was only too proud to own. 
The deception must have begun with dress ; and 
she determined that her first stroke for truth and 
sincerity should be most sublimely made in the re- 
turn of Fanny’s things, and a rigid fidelity to her 
own dresses. “ Besides,” she could not help reflect- 
ing, “ my travelling-suit will be just the thing for 
a picnic.” And here, if the cynical reader of an- 
other sex is disposed to sneer at the method of her 


KITTY ANSWERS. 


215 


self-devotion, I am sure that women, at least, will 
allow it was most natural and highly proper that in 
I this great moment she should first think of dress, 
upon which so great consequences hang in matters 
of the heart. Who — to be honest for once, O 
vain and conceited men ! — can deny that the cut, 
the color, the texture, the stylish set of dresses, has 
not had everything to do with the rapture of love’s 
young dream ? Are not certain bits of lace and 
knots of ribbon as much a part of it as any smite 
or sidelong glance of them all ? And hath not the 
long experience of the fair taught them that artful 
dress is half the virtue of their spells ? Full well 
they know it ; and when Kitty resolved to profit no 
longer by Fanny’s wardrobe, she had won the hard- 
est part of the battle in behalf of perfect truth to- 
wards Mr. Arbuton. She did not, indeed, stop 
with this, but lay awake, devising schemes by which 
she should disabuse him of his errors about her, and 
persuade him that she was no wife for him. 


xn. 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 

“ Well,” said Mrs. Ellison, who had slipped into 
Kitty’s room, in the morning, to do her back hair 
with some advantages of light which her own cham- 
ber lacked, “ it’ll be no crazier than the rest of the 
performance ; and if you and he can stand it, I’m 
sure that we\e no reason to complain.” 

“ Why, I don’t see how it’s to be helped, Fanny. 
He’s asked it; and I’m rather glad he has, for I 
should have hated to have the conventional head- 
ache that keeps young ladies from being seen ; and 
at any rate I don’t understand how the day could 
be passed more sensibly than just as we originally 
planned to spend it. I can make up my mind a 
great deal better with him than away from him. 
But I think there never was a more ridiculous situ- 
ation : now that the high tragedy has faded out of 
it, and the serious part is coming, it makes me 
laugh. Poor Mr. Arbuton will feel all day that he 
is under my mercilessly critical eye, and that he 
mustn’t do this and he mustn’t say that, for fear of 
me ; and he can’t run away, for he’s promised to 
wait patiently for my decision. It’s a most inglorious 
position for him, but I don’t think of anything to do 


217 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 

about it. I could say no at once, but he’d rather 
not.” 

“ What have you got that dress on for ? ” asked 
Mrs. Ellison, abruptly. 

“ Because I’m not going to wear your things any 
more, Fanny. It’s a case of conscience. I feel 
like a guilty creature, being courted in another’s 
clothes ; and I don’t know but it’s for a kind of 
punishment of my deceit that I can’t realize this 
affair as I ought, or my part in it. I keep feeling, 
the whole time, as if it were somebody else, and 
I have an absurd kind of other person’s interest 
in it.” 

Mrs. Ellison essayed some reply, but was met by 
Kitty’s steadfast resolution, and in the end did not 
prevail in so much as a ribbon for her hair. 

It was not till well into the forenoon that the 
preparations for the picnic were complete and the 
four set off together in one carriage. In the strong 
need that was on each of them to make the best of 
the affair, the colonel’s unconsciousness might have 
been a little overdone, but Mrs. Ellison’s demeanor 
was sublimely successful. The situation gave full 
play to her peculiar genius, and you could not have 
said that any act of hers failed to contribute to the 
perfection of her design, that any tone or speech 
was too highly colored. Mr. Arbuton, of whom 
she took possession, and who knew that she knew 
all, felt that he had never done justice to her, and 
uiconded her efforts with something like cordial ad* 


218 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


miration ; while Kitty, with certain grateful looks 
and aversions of the face, paid an ardent homage to 
her strokes of tact, and after a few miserable mo- 
ments, in which her nightlong trouble gnawed at 
her heart, began, in spite of herself, to enjoy the 
humor of the situation. 

It is a lovely road out to Chateau-Bigot. First 
you drive through the ancient suburbs of the Lower 



Town, and then you mount the smooth, hard high- 
way, between pretty country-houses, towards the 
village of Charlesbourg, while Quebec shows, to 
your casual backward-glance, like a wondrous 
painted scene, with the spires and lofty roofs of the 
Upper Town, and the long, irregular wall wander- 
ing on the verge of the cliff ; then the thronging 
gables and chimneys of St. Roch, and again many 
spires and convent walls ; lastly the shipping in the 
St. Charles, which, in one direction, runs, a narrow- 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 


219 


ing gleam, up into its valley, and in the other 
widens into the broad light of the St. Lawrence. 
Quiet, elmy spaces of meadow land stretch between 
the suburban mansions and the village of Charles- 
bourg, where the driver reassured himself as to his 
route from the group of idlers on the platform be- 
fore the church. Then he struck off on a country 
road, and presently turned from this again into a 
lane that grew rougher and rougher, till at last it 
lapsed to a mere cart-track among the woods, where 
the rich, strong odors of the pine, and of the wild 
herbs bruised under the wheels, filled the air. A 
peasant and his black-eyed, open-mouthed boy were 
cutting withes to bind hay at the side of the track, 
and the latter consented to show the strangers to 
the chateau from a point beyond which they could 
not go with the carriage. There the small habi- 
tant and the driver took up the picnic-baskets, and 
led the way through pathless growths of under- 
brush to a stream, so swift that it is said never to 
freeze, so deeply sprung that the summer never 
drinks it dry. A screen of water-growths bordered 
it ; and when this was passed, a wide open space 
revealed itself, with the ruin of the chateau in the 
midst. 

The pathos of long neglect lay upon the scene ; 
for here were evidences of gardens and bowery 
aisles in other times, and now, for many a year, 
desolation and the slow return of the wilderness. 
The mountain rising behind the y chateau grounds 


220 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


showed the dying flush of the deciduous leases 
among the dark green of the pines that clothed it 
to the crest ; a cry of innumerable crickets filled 
the ear of the dreaming noon. 



The ruin itself is not of impressive size, and it is 
a chateau by grace of the popular fancy rather than 
through any right of its own ; for it was, in truth 


% 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 221 

never more than the hunting-lodge of the king’s 
Intendant, Bigot, a man whose sins claim for him a . 
lordly consideration in the history of Quebec. He 
was the last Intendant before the British conquest, 
and in that time of general distress he grew rich by 
oppression of the citizens, and by peculation from 
the soldiers. He built this pleasure-house here in 
the woods, and hither he rode out from Quebec to 
enjoy himself in the chase and the carouses that 
succeed the chase. Here, too, it is said, dwelt in 
secret the Huron girl who loved him, and who sur- 
vives in the memory of the peasants as the mur- 
dered sauvagesse ; and, indeed, there is as much 
proof that she was murdered as that she ever lived. 
When the wicked Bigot was arrested and sent to 
France, where he was tried with great result of 
documentary record, his chateau fell into other 
hands ; at last a party of Arnold’s men wintered 
there in 1775, and it is to our own countrymen that 
we owe the conflagration and the ruin of Chateau- 
Bigot. It stands, as I said, in the middle of that 
open place, with the two gable walls and th3 stone 
partition- wall still almost entire, and that day show- 
ing very effectively against the tender northern sky. 
On the most weatherward gable the iron in the 
stone had shed a dark red stain under the lash of 
many winter storms, and some tough lichens had 
incrusted patches of the surface ; but, for the rest, 
the walls rose in the univied nakedness of all ruins 
in our climate, which has no clinging evergreens 


222 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


wherewith to pity and soften the forlornness of de- 
cay. Out of the rubbish at the foot of the walls 
there sprang a wilding growth of syringas and 
lilacs ; and the interior was choked with flourishing 
weeds, and with the briers of the raspberry, on 
which a few berries hung. The heavy beams, left 
where they fell a hundred years ago, proclaimed the 
honest solidity with which the chateau had been 
built, and there was proof in the cut stone of the 
hearths and chimney-places that it had once had at 
least the ambition of luxury. 

While its visitors stood amidst the ruin, a harm- 
less garden-snake slipped out of one crevice into an- 
other ; from her nest in some hidden corner over- 
head a silent bird flew away. For the moment, — 
so slight is the capacity of any mood, so deeply is 
the heart responsive to a little impulse, — the pal- 
ace of the Caesars could not have imparted a keener 
sense of loss and desolation. They eagerly sought 
such particulars of the ruin as agreed with the de- 
scriptions they had read of it, and were as well con- 
tented with a bit of cellar- way outside as if they 
had really found the secret passage to the sub- 
terranean chamber of the chateau, or the hoard of 
silver which the little habitant said was buried un- 
der it. Then they dispersed about the grounds to 
trace out the borders of the garden, and Mr. Arbu- 
ton won the common praise by discovering the foun- 
dations of the stable of the chateau. 

Then there was no more to do but to prepare for 


223 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 

the picnic. They chose a grassy plot in the shadow 
of a half-dismantled bark-lodge, — a relic of the 
Indians, who resort to the place every summer. In 
the ashes of that sylvan hearth they kindled their 
fire, Mr. Arbuton gathering the sticks, and t u e 
colonel showing a peculiar genius in adapting the 
savage flames to the limitations of the civilized 
coffee-pot borrowed of Mrs. Gray. Mrs. Ellison 
laid the cloth, much meditating the arrangement of 
the viands, and reversing again and again the rela- 
tive positions of the sliced tongue and the sardines 
that flanked the cold roast chicken, and doubting 
dreadfully whether to put down the cake and the 
canned peaches at once, or reserve them for a sec- 
ond course ; the stuffed olives drove her to despair, 
being in a bottle, and refusing to be balanced by 
anything less monumental in shape. Some wild 
asters and red leaves and green and yellowing sprays 
of fern which Kitty arranged in a tumbler were 
hailed with rapture, but presently flung far away 
with fierce disdain because they had ants on them. 
Kitty witnessed this outburst with her usual com- 
placency, and then went on making the coffee. 
With such blissful pain as none but lovers know, 
Mr. Arbuton saw her break the egg upon the edge 
of the coffee-pot, and let it drop therein, and then, 
with a charming frenzy, stir it round and round. 
It was a picture of domestic suggestion, a subtle 
insinuation of home, the unconscious appeal of in- 
herent housewifery to inherent husbandhood. At 


224 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


the crash of the egg-shell he trembled ; the swift 
agitation of the coffee and the egg within the pot 
made him dizzy. 

“ Sha’n’t I stir that for you, Miss Ellison ? ” he 
said, awkwardly. 

“ Oh dear, no ! ” she answered in surprise at a 
man’s presuming to stir coffee ; “ but you may go 
get me some water at the creek, if you please.” 

She gave him a pitcher, and he went off to the 
brook, which was but a minute’s distance away. 
This minute, however, left her alone, for the first 
time that day, with both Dick and Fanny, and a 
silence fell upon all three at once. They could not 
help looking at one another ; and then the colonel, 
to show that he was not thinking of anything, be- 
gan to whistle, and Mrs. Ellison rebuked him for 
whistling. 

“ Why not ? ” he asked. “ It isn’t a funeral, is 
it?” 

“ Of course it isn’t,” said Mrs. Ellison ; and 
Kitty, who had been blushing to the verge of tears, 
laughed instead, and then was consumed with vexa- 
tion when Mr. Arbuton came up, feeling that he 
must suspect himself the motive of her ill-timed 
mirth. “ The champagne ought to be cooled, I 
suppose,” observed Mrs. Ellison, when the coffee 
had been finally stirred and set to boil on the coals. 

u I’m best acquainted with the brook,” said Mr. 
Arbuton, “ and I know just the eddy in it where 
the champagne will cool the soonest.” 


225 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 

“ Then you shall take it there,” answered the 
governess of the feast ; and Mr. Arbuton duteously 
set off with the bottle in his hand. 

The pitcher of water which he had already 
brought stood in the grass ; by a sudden movement 
of the skirt, Kitty knocked it over. The colonel 
made a start forward ; Mrs. Ellison arrested him 
with a touch, while she bent a look of ineffable ad- 
miration upon Kitty. 

“ Now, I’ll teach myself,” said Kitty, “ that I 
can’t be so clumsy with impunity. I’ll go and fill 
that pitcher again myself.” She hurried after Mr. 
Arbuton ; they scarcely spoke going or coming ; 
but the constraint that Kitty felt was nothing to 
that she had dreaded in seeking to escape from the 
tacit raillery of the colonel and the championship 
of Fanny. Yet she trembled to realize that already 
her life had become so far entangled with this 
stranger’s, that she found refuge with him from her 
own kindred. They could do nothing to help her 
in this ; the trouble was solely hers and his, and 
they two must get out of it one way or other them- 
selves ; the case scarcely admitted even of sym- 
pathy, and if it had not been hers, it would have 
been one to amuse her rather than appeal to her 
compassion. Even as it was, she sometimes caught 
herself smiling at the predicament of a young girl 
who had passed a month in every appearance of 
love-making, and who, being asked her heart, was 
holding her lover in suspense whilst she searched it, 

15 


226 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


and meantime was picnicking with him upon the 
terms of casual flirtation. Of all the heroines in 
her books, she knew none in such a strait as this. 

But her perplexities did not impair the appetite 
which she brought to the sylvan feast. In her 
whole simple life she had never tasted champagne 
before, and she said innocently, as she put the frisk- 
ing fluid from her lips after the first taste, “ Why, 
I thought you had to learn to like champagne.” 

“No,” remarked the colonel, “it’s like reading 
and wilting ; it comes by nature. I suppose that 
even one of the lower animals would like cham- 
pagne. The refined instinct of young ladies makes 
them recognize its merits instantly. Some of the 
Confederate cellars,” added the colonel, thought- 
fully, “ had very good champagne in them. Green 
seal was the favorite of our erring brethren. It 
wasn’t one of their errors. I prefer it myself to 
our own native cider, whether made of apples or 
grapes. Yes, it’s better even than the water from 
the old chain-pump in the back yard at Eriecreek, 
though it hasn’t so fine a flavor of lubricating oil in 
it.” 

The faint chill that touched Mr. Arbuton at the 
mention of Eriecreek and its petrolic associations 
was transient. He was very light of heart, since 
the advance that Kitty seemed to have made him ; 
and in his temporary abandon he talked well, and 
promoted the pleasure of the time without critical 
reserves. When the colonel, with the reluctance 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 


227 


of our soldiers to speak of their warlike experiences 
before civilians, had suffered himself to tell a story 
that his wife begged of him about his last battle, 
Mr. Arbuton listened with a deference that flattered 
poor Mrs. Ellison, and made her marvel at Kitty’s 
doubt concerning him ; and then he spoke enter- 
tainingly of some travel experiences of his own, 
which he politely excused as quite unworthy to 
come after the colonel’s story. He excused them a 
little too much, and just gave the modest soldier a 
faint, uneasy fear of having boasted. But no one 
else felt this result of his delicacy, and the feast 
was merry enough. When it was ended, Mrs. 
Ellison, being still a little infirm of foot, remained 
in the shadow of the bark-lodge, and the colonel fit 
his cigar, and loyally stretched himself upon the 
grass before her. 

There was nothing else for Kitty and Mr. Arbu- 
ton but to stroll off together, and she preferred to 
do this. 

They sauntered up to the chateau in silence, and 
peered somewhat languidly about the ruin. On a 
bit of smooth surface in a sheltered place many 
names of former visitors were written, and Mr. 
Arbuton said he supposed they might as well add 
those of their own party. 

“ Oh yes,” answered Kitty, with a half-sigh, seat- 
ing herself upon a fallen stone, and letting her 
hands fall into each other in her lap as her wont 
was, “you write them.” A curious pensiveness 
passed from one to the other and possessed them both. 


228 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


Mr. Arbuton began to write. Suddenly, “ Misa 
Ellison,” said he, with a smile, “ I’ve blundered in 
your name ; I neglected to put the Miss before it • 
and now there isn’t room on the plastering.” 

“ Oh, never mind,” replied Kitty, “ I dare say it 
won’t be missed ! ” 

Mr. Arbuton neither perceived nor heeded the 
pun. He was looking in a sort of rapture at the 
name which his own hand had written now for 
the first time, and he felt an indecorous desire to 
kiss it. 

“ If I could speak it as I’ve written it ” — 

“ I don’t see what harm there would be in that,” 
said the owner of the name, “ or what object,” she 
added more discreetly. 

— “I should feel that I had made a great gain.” 

“ I never told you,” answered Kitty, evasively, 
“how much I admire your first name, Mr. A.r- 
buton.” 

“ How did you know it ? ” 

“ It was on the card you gave my cousin,” said 
Kitty, frankly, but thinking he now must know she 
had been keeping his card. 

“ It’s an old family name, — a sort of heirloom 
from the first of us who came to the country ; and 
in every generation since, some Arbuton has had to 
wear it.” 

“ It’s superb ! ” cried Kitty. “ Miles ! ‘ Miles 
Standish, the Puritan captain,’ ‘ Miles Stan dish, the 
Captain of Plymouth.’ I should be very proud of 
such a name.” 

















































































































































229 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 

“ You have only to take it,” he said, gravely. 

“ Oh, I didn’t mean that,” she said with a blush, 
and then added, “ Yours is a very old family, then, 
isn’t it?” 

“ Yes, it’s pretty well,” answered Mr. Arbuton, 
“ but it’s not such a rare thing in the East, you 
know.” 

“ I suppose not. The Ellisons are not an old 
family. If we went back of my uncle, we should 
only come to backwoodsmen and Indian fighters. 
Perhaps that’s the reason we don’t care much for 
old families. You think a great deal of them in 
Boston, don’t you ? ” 

“We do, and we don’t. It’s a long story, and 
I’m afraid I couldn’t make you understand, unless 
you had seen something of Boston society.” 

“ Mr. Arbuton,” said Kitty, abruptly plunging 
to the bottom of the subject on which they had 
been hovering, “ I’m dreadfully afraid that what 
you said to me — what you asked of me, yesterday 
— was all through a misunderstanding. I’m afraid 
that you’ve somehow mistaken me and my circum- 
stances, and that somehow I’ve innocently helped 
on your mistake.” 

“ There is no mistake,” he answered, eagerly, 
“ about my loving you ! ” 

Kitty did not look up, nor answer this outburst, 
which flattered while it pained her. She said, 
“ I’ve been so much mistaken myself, and I’ve been 
bo long finding it out, that I should feel anxious to 


230 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


have you know just what kind of girl you’d asked 
to be your wife, before I ” — 

“ What ? ” 

“ Nothing. But I should want you to know that 
in many things my life has been very, very different 
from yours. The first thing I can remember — 
you’ll think I’m more autobiographical than our 
driver at Ha-Ha Bay, even, but I must tell you all 
this — is about Kansas, where we had removed from 
Illinois, and of our having hardly enough to eat or 
wear, and of my mother grieving over our priva- 
tions. At last, when my father was killed,” she 
said, dropping her voice, “ in front of our own 
door ” — 

Mr. Arbuton gave a start. “ Killed ? ” 

“ Yes ; didn’t you know ? Or no : how could 
you ? He was shot by the Missourians.” 

Whether it was not hopelessly out of taste to 
have a father-in-law who had been shot by the 
Missourians ? Whether he could persuade Kitty 
to suppress that part of her history? That she 
looked very pretty, sitting there, with her earnest 
eyes lifted towards his. These things flashed will- 
fully through Mr. Arbuton’s mind. 

“My father was a Free-State man,” continued 
Kitty, in a tone of pride. “ He wasn’t when he 
first went to Kansas,” she added simply; while 
Mr. Arbuton groped among his recollections of that 
forgotten struggle for some association with these 
names, keenly feeling the squalor of it all, and 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 


231 


thinking still how very pretty she was. “ He 
went out there to publish a proslavery paper. But 
when he found out what the Border Ruffians really 
were, he turned against them. He used to be very 
bitter about my uncle’s having become an Aboli- 
tionist ; they had had a quarrel about it ; but father 
wrote to him from Kansas, and they made it up ; 
and before father died he was able to tell mother 
that we were to go to uncle’s. But mother was sick 
then, and she only lived a month after father ; and 
when my cousin came out to get us, just before she 
died, there was scarcely a crust of cornbread in our 
cabin. It seemed like heaven to get to Eriecreek ; 
but even at Eriecreek we live in a way that I am 
afraid you wouldn’t respect. My uncle has just 
enough, and we are very plain people indeed. I 
suppose,” continued the young girl meekly, “ that 
I haven’t had at all what you’d call an education. 
Uncle told me what to read, at first, and after that 
I helped myself. It seemed to come naturally ; but 
don’t you see that it wasn’t an education ? ” 

“ I beg pardon,” said Mr. Arbuton, with a blush ; 
for he had just then lost the sense of what she said 
in the music of her voice, as it hesitated over these 
particulars of her history. 

“ I mean,” explained Kitty, “ that I’m afraid I 
must be very one-sided. I'm dreadfully ignorant 
pf a great many things. I haven’t any accomplish- 
ments, only the little bit of singing and playing 
that you’ve heard ; I couldn’t tell a good picture 


232 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


from a bad one; I’ve never been to the opera; I 
don’t know anything about society. Now just im- 
agine,” cried Kitty, with sublime impartiality, 
“ such a girl as that in Boston ! ” 

Even Mr. Arbuton could not help smiling at this 
comic earnestness, while she resumed: “At home 
my cousins and I do all kinds of things that the 
ladies whom you know have done for them. We do 
our own work, for one thing,” she continued, with 
a sudden treacherous misgiving that what she was 
saying might be silly and not heroic, but bravely 
stifling her doubt. “ My cousin Virginia is house- 
keeper, and Rachel does the sewing, and I’m a kind 
of maid-of-all-work.” 

Mr. Arbuton listened respectfully, vainly striv- 
ing for some likeness of Miss Ellison in the figure 
of the different second-girls who, during life, had 
taken his card, or shown him into drawing-rooms, 
or waited on him at table ; failing in this, he tried 
her in the character of daughter of that kind of 
farm-house where they take summer boarders and 
do their own work ; but evidently the Ellisons were 
not of that sort either ; and he gave it up and wa3 
silent, not knowing what to say, while Kitty, a lit- 
tle piqued by his silence, went on : “ W e’re not 
ashamed, you understand, of our ways ; there’s 
such a thing as being proud of not being proud ; 
and that’s what we are, or what I am ; for the rest 
are not mean enough ever to think about it, and 
once I wasn’t, either. But that’s the kind of life 


2B3 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 

I’m used to ; and though I’ve read of other kinds 
of life a great deal, I’ve not been brought up to 
anything different, don’t you understand ? And 
maybe — I don’t know — I mightn’t like or respect 
your kind of people any more than they did me. 
My uncle taught us ideas that are quite different 
from yours ; and what if I shouldn’t be able to give 
them up ? ” 

“ There is only one thing I know or see : I love 
you ! ” he said, passionately, and drew nearer by a 
step ; but she put out her hand and repelled him 
with a gesture. 

“ Sometimes you might be ashamed of me before 
those you knew to be my inferiors, — really com- 
mon and coarse-minded people, but regularly edu- 
cated, and used to money and fashion. I should 
cower before them, and I never could forgive 
you.” 

“ I’ve one answer to all this : I love you ! ” 

Kitty flushed in generous admiration of his 
magnanimity, and said, with more of tenderness 
than she had yet felt towards him, “ I’m sorry 
that I can’t answer you now, as you wish, Mr. Ar- 
buton.” 

“ But you will, to-morrow ? ” 

She shook her head. “ I don’t know ; oh, I 
don’t know ! I’ve been thinking of something. 
That Mrs. March asked me to visit her in Boston ; 
but we had given up doing so, because of the long 
delay here. If I asked my cousins, they’d still go 


234 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


home that way. It’s too bad to put you off again ; 
but you must see me in Boston, if only for a day 
or two, and after you’ve got back into your old as- 
sociations there, before I answer you. I’m in great 
trouble. You must wait, or I must say no.” 

“ I’ll wait,” said Mr. Arbuton. 

“ Oh, thank you,” sighed Kitty, grateful for this 
patience, and not for the chance of still winning 
him ; “ you are very forbearing, I’m sure.” 

She again put forth her hand, but not now to 
repel him. He clasped it, and kept it in his, then 
impulsively pressed it against his lips. 

Colonel and Mrs. Ellison had been watching the 
whole pantomime, forgotten. 

“ Well,” said the colonel, “ I suppose that’s the 
end of the play, isn’t it ? I don’t like it, Fanny ; 
I don’t like it.” 

“ Hush ! ” whispered Mrs. Ellison. 

They were both puzzled when Kitty and Mr. 
Arbuton came towards them with anxious faces. 
Kitty was painfully revolving in her mind what 
she had just said, and thinking she had said not so 
much as she meant and yet so much more, and tor- 
menting herself with the fear that she had been at 
once too bold and too meek in her demand for 
longer delay. Did it not give him further claim 
upon her? Must it not have seemed a very auda- 
cious thing? What right had she to make it, and 
how could she now finally say no ? Then the mat- 
ter of her explanation to him : was it in the least 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 235 

what she meant to say ? Must it not give him an 
idea of intellectual and spiritual poverty in her life 
which she knew had not been in it? Would he 
not believe, in spite of her boasts, that she was 
humiliated before him by a feeling of essential in- 
feriority ? Oh, had she boasted ? What she meant 
to do was just to make him understand clearly 
what she was ; but, had she ? Could he be made 
to understand this with what seemed his narrow 
conception of things outside of his own experience ? 
Was it worth while to try? Did she care enough 
for him to make the effort desirable ? Had she 
made it for his sake, or in the interest of truth, 
merely, or in self-defense ? 

These and a thousand other like questions beset} 
her the whole way home to Quebec, amid the fre- 
quent pauses of the talk, and underneath whatever 
she was saying. Half the time she answered yes 
or no to them, and not to what Dick, or Fanny, or 
Mr. Arbuton had asked her ; she was distraught 
with their recurrence, as they teased about her like 
angry bees, and one now and then settled, and 
t stung and stung. Through the whole night, tco, 
they pursued her in dreams with pitiless iteration 
and fantastic change ; and at dawn she was awak- 
ened by voices calling up to her from the Ursulines’ 
Garden, — the slim, pale nun crying out, in a lam- 
entable accent, that all men were false and there 
was no shelter save the convent or the grave, and 
the comfortable sister bemoaning herself that on 


286 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


meagre days Madame de la Peltrie ate nothing but 
choke-cherries from Chateau- Bigot. 

Kitty rose and dressed herself, and sat at the 
window, and watched the morning come into the 
garden below : first, a tremulous flush of the heav- 
ens ; then a rosy light on the silvery roofs and ga- 
bles ; then little golden aisles among the lilacs and 
hollyhocks. The tiny flower-beds just under her 
window were left, with their snap-dragons and lark- 
spurs, in dew and shadow ; the small dog stood on 
the threshold, and barked uneasily when the bell 
rang in the Ursulines’ Chapel, where the nuns were 
at matins. 

It was Sunday, and a soft tranquillity blest the 
cool air in which the young girl bathed her troubled 
spirit. A faint anticipative homesickness mingled 
now with her nightlong anxiety, — a pity for her- 
self that on the morrow she must leave these pretty 
sights, which had become so dear to her that she 
could not but feel herself native among them. She 
must go back to Eriecreek, which was not a walled 
city, and had not a stone building, much less a ca- 
thedral or convent, within its borders ; and though 
phe dearly loved those under her uncle’s roof there, 
yet she had to own that, beyond that shelter, there 
was little in Eriecreek to touch the heart or take 
the fancy ; that the village was ugly, and the vil- 
lage people mortally dull, narrow, and uncongenial. 
Why was not her lot cast somewhere else ? Why 
should she not see more of the world that she had 


THE PICNIC AT CHATEAU-BIGOT. 


237 


found so fair, and which all her aspirations had 
fitted her to enjoy? Quebec had been to her a 
rapture of beautiful antiquity; but Europe, but 
London, Venice, Rome, those infinitely older and 
mere storied cities of which she had lately talked 
so much with Mr. Arbuton, — why should she not 
see them ? 

Here, for the guilty space of a heat-lightning 
flash, Kitty wickedly entertained the thought of 
marrying Mr. Arbuton for the sake of a bridal trip 
to Europe, and bade love and the fitness of things 
and the incompatibility of Boston and Eriecreek 
traditions take care of themselves. But then she 
blushed for her meanness, and tried to atone for it 
as she could by meditating the praise of Mr. Arbu- 
ton. She felt remorse for having, as he had proved 
yesterday, undervalued and misunderstood him ; 
and she was willing now to think him even more 
magnanimous than his generous words and conduct 
showed him. It would be a base return for his 
patience to accept him from a worldly ambition ; 
a man of his noble spirit merited the best that love 
could give. But she respected him ; at last she 
respected him fully and entirely, and she could tell 
him that at any rate. 

The words in which he had yesterday protested 
his love for her repeated themselves constantly in 
her reverie. If he should speak them again after 
he had seen her in Boston, in the light by which 
«he was anxious to be tested, — she did not know 
what she should say. 


XIII. 


OEDEAI. 

They had not planned to go anywhere that day , 
but after church they found themselves with the 
loveliest afternoon of their stay at Quebec to be 
passed somehow, and it was a pity to pass it indoors, 
the colonel said at their early dinner. They can- 
vassed the attractions of the different drives out of 
town, and they decided upon that to Lorette. The 
Ellisons had already been there, but Mr. Arbuton 
had not, and it was from a dim motive of politeness 
towards him that Mrs. Ellison chose the excursion ; 
though this did not prevent her from wondering 
aloud afterwards, from time to time, why she had 
chosen it. He was restless and absent, and an- 
swered at random when points of the debate were 
referred to him, but he eagerly assented to the con- 
clusion, and was in haste to set out. 

The road to Lorette is through St. John’s 'Gate, 
down into the outlying meadows and rye-fields, 
where, crossing and recrossing the swift St. Charles, 
it finally rises at Lorette above the level of the 
citadel. It is a lonelier road than that to Mont- 
morenci, and the scattering cottages upon it have 
uot the well to-do prettiness, the operatic repair, of 


ORDEAL. 


239 


stone-built Beauport. But they are charming, 
nevertheless, and the people seem to be remoter 
from modern influences. Peasant-girls, in purple 
gowns and broad straw hats, and not the fashions of 
the year before last, now and then appeared to our 
acquaintance ; near one ancient cottage an old man, 
in the true habitant’s red woollen cap with a long fall, 
leaned over the 
bars of his gate 
and smoked a 
short pipe. 

By and by 
they came to 
Jeune -Lorette, 
an almost 
ideally pretty 
hamlet, border- 
ing the road on 
either hand 
with galleried 
and balconied little houses, from which the people 
bowed to them as they passed, and piously enclosing 
in its midst the village church and churchyard. 
They soon after reached Lorette itself, which they 
might easily have known for an Indian town by its 
unkempt air, and the irregular attitudes in which 
the shabby cabins lounged along the lanes that wan- 
dered through it, even if the Ellisons had not known 
;t already, or if they had not been welcomed by 2 
pomp of Indian boys and girls of all shades of dark 



240 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


nes3. The girls had bead- wrought moccasins and 
work-bags to sell, and the boys bore bows and 
arrows, and burst into loud cries of “ Shoot ! shoot ! 
grand shoot ! Put-up-pennies ! shoot-the-pennies ! 
Grand shoot ! ” When they recognized the colonel, 
as they did after the party had dismounted in front 
of the church, they renewed these cries with greater 
vehemence. 

“ Now, Richard,” implored his wife, “ you’re not 
going to let those little pests go through all that 
shooting performance again ? ” 

“ I must. It is expected of me whenever I come 
to Lorette ; and I would never be the man to neg- 
lect an ancient observance of this kind.” The 
colonel stuck a copper into the hard sand as he 
spoke, and a small storm of arrows hurtled around 
it. Presently it flew into the air, and a fair-faced, 
blue-eyed boy picked it up : he won most of the 
succeeding coins. 

“ There’s an aborigine of pure blood,” remarked 
the colonel ; “ his ancestors came from Normandy 
two hundred years ago. That’s the reason he uses 
the bow so much better than these coffee-colored 
impostors.” 

They went into the chapel, which stands on the 
site of the ancient church burnt not long ago. It 
is small, and it is bare and rude inside, with only 
the commonest ornamentation about the altar, on 
one side of which was the painted wooden statue of 
a nun, on the other that of a priest, — slight enough 


ORDEAL. 


241 


commemoration of those who had suffered so much 
for the hopeless race that lingers and wastes at 
Lorette in incurable squalor and wildness. They 
are Christians after their fashion, this poor remnant 
of the mighty Huron nation converted by the Jes- 
uits and crushed by the Iroquois in the far-western 
wilderness ; but whatever they are at heart, they 
are still savage in countenance, and these boys had 
faces of wolves and foxes. They followed their visitors 
into the church, where 
there was only an old 
woman praying to a pic- 
ture, beneath which hung 
a votive hand and foot, 
and a few young Huron 
suppliants with very sleek 
hair, whose wandering 
devotions seemed directed 
now at the strangers, and 
now at the wooden effigy 
of the House of St. Ann 
borne by two gilt angels above the high-altar. 
There was no service, and the visitors soon quitted 
' the chapel amid the clamors of the boys outside. 
Some young girls, in the dress of our period, were 
vromenading up and down the road with their arms 
about each other and their eyes alert for the effect 



upon spectators. 

From one of the village lanes came swaggering 
towards the visitors a figure of aggressive fashion, 

16 


242 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


— a very buckish young fellow, with a heavy black 
mustache and black eyes, who wore a jaunty round 
hat, blue checked trousers, a white vest, and a 
morning-coat of blue diagonals; in his hand he 
swung a light cane. 



“ That is the son of the 
chief, Paul Picot,” whispered 
the driver. 

“ Excuse me,” said the 
colonel, instantly ; and the 
young gentleman nodded. 
“ Can you tell me if we could 
see the chief to-day ? ” 

“ Oh yes ! ” answered the 
notary in English, “ my 
father is chief. You can see 
him ; ” and passed on with a 
somewhat supercilious air. 

The colonel, in his first 
hours at Quebec, had bought 
at a bazaar of Indian wares 
the photograph of an Indian 
warrior in a splendor of fac- 
titious savage panoply. It 
was called “ The Last of the 
Hurons,” and the colonel now avenged himself for 
the curtness of M. Picot, by styling him “ The 
Next to the Last of the Hurons.” 

“ Well,” said Fanny, who had a wife’s willing- 
ness to see her husband occasionally snubbed, “ ] 


ORDEAL. 


243 


don’t know why you asked him. I’m sure nobody 
wants to see that old chief and his wretched bead 
trumpery again.” 

“ My dear,” answered the 
colonel, “wherever Americans 
go, they like to be presented 
at court. Mr. Arbuton, here, 

I’ve no doubt, has been intro- 
duced to the crowned heads 
of the Old World, and longs 
to pay his respects to the sov- 
ereign of Lorette. Besides, I 
always call upon the reign- 
ing prince when I come to 
Lorette. The coldness of the 
heir apparent shall not repel 
me.” 

The colonel led the way up 
the principal lane of the vil- 
lage. Some of the cabins 
were ineffectually white- 
washed, but none of them 
were so uncleanly within as 
the outside prophesied. At 
the doors and windows sat women and young girls 
working moccasins ; here and there stood a well-fed 
mother of a family with an infant Huron in her 
arms. They all showed the traces of white blood, 
as did the little ones who trooped after the strangers 
and demanded charity as clamorously as so many 



244 A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 

Italians ; only a few faces were of a clear dark, as if 
stained by walnut- juice, and it was plain that the 
Hurons were fading, if not dying out. They re- 
sponded with a queer mixture of French liveliness 
and savage stolidity to the colonel’s jocose advances. 
Great lean dogs lounged about the thresholds ; they 
and the women and children 
were alone visible ; there were 
no men. None of the houses 
were fenced, save the chief’s ; 
this stood behind a neat grass 
plot, across which, at the mo- 
ment our travellers came up, 
two youngish women were 
trailing in long morning- 
gowns and eye-glasses. The 
chief’s house was a handsome 
cottage, papered and carpeted, 
with a huge stove in the par- 
lor, where also stood a table 
exposing the bead trumpery 
of Mrs. Ellison’s scorn. A 
full-bodied elderly man with 
quick, black eyes and a tran- 
quil, dark face stood near it ; he wore a half -military 
coat with brass buttons, and was the chief Picot. 
At sight of the colonel he smiled slightly and gave 
his hand in welcome. Then he sold such of his 
wares as the colonel wanted, rather discouraging 
than inviting purchase. He talked, upon some 
urgency, of his people, who, he said, numbered thre« 



ORDEAL. 


245 


hundred, and were a few of them farmers, but were 
mostly hunters, and, in the service of the officers of 
the garrison, spent the winter in the chase. He 
spoke fair English, but reluctantly, and he seemed 
glad to have his guests go, who were indeed willing 
enough to leave him. 

Mr. Arbuton especially was willing, for he had 
been longing to find himself alone with Kitty, of 
which he saw no hope while the idling about the 
village lasted. 

The colonel bought an insane watch-pocket for 
une dolleur from a pretty little girl as they returned 
through the village ; but he forbade the boys any 
more archery at his expense, with “ Pas de grand 
shoot, now , mes enfans ! — Friends,” he added to 
his own party, “ we have the Falls of Lorette and 
the better part of the afternoon still before us ; how 
shall we employ them ? ” 

Mrs. Ellison and Kitty did not know, and Mr. 
Arbuton did not know, as they sauntered down past 
the chapel, to the stone mill that feeds its industry 
from the beauty of the fall. The cascade, with two 
or three successive leaps above the road, plunges 
headlong down a steep crescent-shaped slope, and 
bides its foamy whiteness in the dark-foliaged ravine 
below. It is a wonder of graceful motion, of irides- 
cent lights and delicious shadows ; a shape of love- 
liness that seems instinct with a conscious life. Its 
beauty, like that of all natural marvels on our con- 
tinent, is on a generous scale ; and now the specta- 


246 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


tors, after viewing it from the mill, passed for a 
different prospect of it to the other shore, and there 
the colonel and Fanny wandered a little farther 
down the glen, leaving Kitty with Mr. Arbuton. 
The affair between them was in such a puzzling 
phase, that there was as much reason for as against 
this ; nobody could do anything, not even openly 
recognize it. Besides, it was somehow very inter- 
esting to Kitty to be there alone with him, and she 
thought that if all were well, and he and she were 
really engaged, the sense of recent betrothal could 
be nowhere else half so sweet as in that wild and 
lovely place. She began to imagine a bliss so 
divine, that it would have been strange if she had 
not begun to desire it, and it was with a half-reluc- 
tant, half-acquiescent thrill that she suffered him to 
touch upon what was first in both their minds. 

“ I thought you had agreed not to talk of that 
again for the present,” she feebly protested. 

“ No ; I was not forbidden to tell you I loved 
you ; I only consented to wait for my answer ; but 
now I shall break my promise. I cannot wait. I 
think the conditions you make dishonor me,” said 
Mr. Arbuton, with an impetuosity that fascinated 
her. 

“ Oh, how can you say such a thing as that ? ” 
she asked, liking him for his resentment of condi- 
tions that he found humiliating, while her heart 
leaped remorseful to her lips for having imposed 
them. “ You know very well why I wanted to de- 


ORDEAL. 


247 


lay ; and you know that — that — if — I liad done 
anything to wound you, I never could forgive my- 
self ” 

“ But you doubted me, all the same,” he rejoined. 

u Did I ? I thought it was myself that I doubted.” 
She was stricken with sudden misgiving as to what 
had seemed so well ; her words tended rapidly she 
could not tell whither. 

“ But why do you doubt yourself ? ” 

“I — I don’t know.” 

“ No,” he said bitterly, “ for it really is I whom 
you doubt. I can’t understand what you have seen 
in me that makes you believe anything could change 
me towards you,” he added with a kind of humble- 
ness that touched her. “I could have borne to 
think that I was not worthy of you.” 

“ Not worthy of me ! I never dreamed of such a 
thing.” 

“ But to have you suspect me of such mean- 
ness ” — 

' 4 Oh, Mr. Arbuton I ” 

— “ As you hinted yesterday, is a disgrace that 
I ought not to bear. I have thought of it all night ; 
and I must have my answer now, whatever it is.” 

She did not speak ; for every word that she had 
ut tered had only served to close escape behind her. 
She did not know what to do ; she looked up at him 
for help. He said with an accent of meekness pa- 
thetic from him, “ Why must you still doubt me ? ” 

“ I don’t,” she scarcely more than breathed. 


248 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


“ Then you are mine, now, without waiting, and 
forever,” he cried ; and caught her to him in a swift 
embrace. 

She only said, “ Oh ! ” in a tone of gentle re- 
proach, yet clung to him a helpless moment as for 
rescue from himself. She looked at him in blank 
pallor, striving to realize the tender violence in 
which his pulses wildly exulted ; then a burning 
flush dyed her face, and tears came into her eyes. 
44 I hope you’ll never be sorry,” she said ; and then, 
“ Do let us go,” for she had no distinct desire save 
for movement, for escape from that place. 

Her heart had been surprised, she hardly knew 
how ; but at his kiss a novel tenderness had leaped 
to life in it. She suffered him to put her hand upon 
his arm, and then she began to feel a strange pride 
in his being tall and handsome, and hers. But she 
kept thinking as they walked, “ I hope he’ll never 
be sorry,” and she said it again, half in jest. He 
pressed her hand against his heart, and met her look 
with one of protest and reassurance, that presently 
melted into something sweeter yet. He said, 
44 What beautiful eyes you have ! I noticed the long 
lashes when I saw you on the Saguenay boat, and I 
couldn’t get away from them.” 

44 Please, don’t speak of that dreadful time ! ” 
cried Kitty. 

44 No ? Why not ? ” 

“ Oh, because ! I think it was such a bold kind 
of accident my taking your arm by mistake ; and 




ORDEAL. 


249 


the whole next day has always been a perfect horror 
to me.” 

He looked at her in questioning amaze. 

u 1 tnink I was very pert with you all day, — and 
I don't think I’m pert naturally, — taking you up 
about the landscape, and twitting you about the 
Saguenay scenery and legends, you know. But I 
thought you were trying to put me down, — you 
ire rather down-putting at times, — and I admired 
you, and I couldn’t bear it.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Mr. Arbuton. He dimly recollected, 
as if it had been in some former state of existence, 
that there were things he had not approved in Kitty 
that day, but now he met her penitence with a smile 
and another pressure of the hand. “Well, then,” 
he said, “ if you don’t like to recall that time, let’s 
go back of it to the day I met you on Goat Island 
Bridge at Niagara.” 

“ Oh, did you see me there ? I thought you 
didn't ; but 1 sa w you. You had on a blue cravat,” 
she answered ; and he returned with as much the 
air of coherency as if really continuing the same 
train of thought, “ You won’t think it necessary to 
visit Boston, now, I suppose,” and he smiled tri- 
umphantly upon her. “ I fancy that I have now a 
better right to introduce you there than your South 
End friends.” 

Kitty smiled, too. “ I’m willing to wait. But 
don’t you think you ought to see Eriecreek before 
you promise too solemnly ? I can’t allow that 


250 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


there’s anything serious, till you’ve seen me at 
home.” 

They had been going, for no reason that they 
knew, back to the country inn near which you pur- 
chase admittance to a certain view of the falls, and 
now they sat down on the piazza, somewhat apart 
from other people who were there, as Mr. Arbuton 
said, “ I shall visit Eriecreek soon enough. But 
I shall not come to put myself or you to the proof. 
I don’t ask to see you at home before claiming you 
forever.” 

Kitty murmured, “ Ah ! you are more generous 
than I was.” 

“ I doubt it.” 

“ Oh yes, you are. But I wonder if you’ll be 
able to find Eriecreek.” 

“ Is it on the map? ” 

“ It’s on the county map ; and so is Uncle Jack’s 
lot on it, and a picture of his house, for that matter. 
They’ll all be standing on the piazza — something 
like this one — when you come up. You’ll know 
Uncle Jack by his big gray beard, and his bushy 
eyebrows, and his boots, which he won’t have 
blacked, and his Leghorn hat, which we can’t get 
him to change. The girls will be there with him, 
— Virginia all red and heated with having got sup- 
per for you, and Rachel with the family mending in 
her hand, — and they’ll both come running down 
the walk to welcome you. How will you like it ? ” 

Mr. Arbuton suspected the gross caricature of 


ORDEAL. 


251 


this picture, and smiled securely at it. “1 shall 
like it well enough,” he said, “ if you run down 
with them. Where shall you be ? ” 

“ I forgot. I shall be up-stairs in my room, peep- 
ing through the window-blinds, to see how you take 
it. Then I shall come down, and receive you with 
dignity in the parlor, but after supper you’ll have 
to excuse me while I help with the dishes. Uncle 
Jack will talk to you. He’ll talk to you about Bos- 
ton. He’s much fonder of Boston than you are, 
even.” And here Kitty broke off with a laugh, 
thinking what a very different Boston her Uncle 
Jack’s was from Mr. Arbu ton’s, and maliciously 
diverted with what she conceived of their mutual 
bewilderment in trying to get some common stand- 
point. He had risen from his chair, and was now 
standing a few paces from her, looking towards the 
fall, as if by looking he might delay the coming of 
the colonel and Fanny. 

Slie checked her merriment a moment to take 
note of two ladies who were coming up the path 
towards the porch where she was sitting. Mr. Ar« 
buton did not see them. The ladies mounted the 
steps, and turned slowly and languidly to survey 
the company. But at sight of Mr. Arbuton, one of 
them advanced directly towards him, with exclama- 
tions of surprise and pleasure, and he with a stupe- 
fied face and a mechanical movement turned to meet 
her. 

She was a lady of more than middle age, dressed 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


252 


witL certain personal audacities of color and shape, 
rather than overdressed, and she thrust forward, in 
expression of her amazement, a very small hand, 
wonderfully well gloved ; her manner was full ol 
the anxiety of a woman who had fought hard for a 
high place in society, and yet suggested a latent 
hatred of people who, in yielding to her, had made 
success bitter and humiliating. 

Her companion was a young and very handsome 
girl, exquisitely dressed, and just so far within the 
fashion as to show her already a mistress of style. 
But it was not the vivid New York stylishness. A 
peculiar restraint of line, an effect of lady-like con- 
cession to the ruling mode, a temperance of orna- 
ment, marked the whole array, and stamped it with 
the unmistakable character of Boston. Her clear 
tints of lip and cheek and eye were incomparable ; 
her blond hair gave weight to the poise of her deli- 
cate head by its rich and decent masses. She had 
a look of independent innocence, an angelic expres- 
sion of extremely nice young fellow blending with a 
subtle maidenly charm. She indicated her surprise 
at seeing Mr. Arbuton by pressing the point of her 
sun-umbrella somewhat nervously upon the floor, 
and blushing a very little. Then she gave him her 
hand with friendly frankness, and smiled dazzlingly 
upon him, while the elder hailed him with effusive 
assertion of familiar acquaintance, heaping him with 
greetings and flatteries and cries of pleasure. 

“ Oh dear ! ” sighed Kitty, “ these are old friends 


ORDEAL. 


253 


of his ; and will I have to know them ? Perhaps 
it’s best to begin at once, though,” she thought. 

But he made no movement towards her where she 
sat. The ladies began to walk up and down, and 
he with them. As they passed her, he did not seem 
to see her. 

The ladies said they were waiting for their car- 
riage, which they had left at a certain point when 
they went to look at the fall, and had ordered to 
take them up at the inn. They talked about people 
and things that Kitty had never heard of. 

“ Have you seen the Tradings since you left New- 
port ? ” asked the elder woman. 

“ No,” said Mr. Arbuton. 

“ Perhaps you’ll be surprised then — or perhaps 
you won’t — to hear that we parted with them on 
the top of Mount Washington, Thursday. And the 
Mayflowers are at the Glen House. The mountains 
are horribly full. But what are you to do ! Now 
the Continent ” — she spoke as if the English Chan- 
nel divided it from us — “is so common, you can’t 
run over there any more.” 

Whenever they walked towards Kitty, this 
woman, whose quick eye had detected Mr. Arbuton 
at her side as she came up to the inn, bent upon tL.e 
young girl’s face a stare of insolent curiosity, yet 
with a front of such impassive coldness that to 
another she might not have seemed aware of her 
presence. Kitty shuddered at the thought of being 
made acquainted with her ; then she remembered. 


254 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


“ Why, how stupid I am ! Of course a gentleman 
can’t introduce ladies ; and the only thing for him 
to do is to excuse himself to them as soon as he can 
without rudeness, and come back to me.” But none 
the less she felt helpless and deserted. Though or- 
dinarily so brave, she was so beaten down by that 
look, that for a glance of not unkindly interest that 
the young lady gave her she was abjectly grateful. 
She admired her, and fancied that she could easily 
be friends with such a girl as that, if they met 
fairly. She wondered that she should be there with 
that other, not knowing that society cannot really 
make distinctions between fine and coarse, and 
could not have given her a reason for their associa- 
tion. 

Still the three walked up and down before Kitty, 
and still she made his peace with herself, thinking, 
“ He is embarrassed ; he can’t come to me at once ; 
but he will, of course.” 

The elder of his companions talked on in her 
loud voice of this thing and that, of her summer, 
and of the people she had met, and of their places 
and yachts and horses, and all the splendors of their 
keeping, — talk which Kitty’s aching sense some- 
times caught by fragments, and sometimes in full. 
The lady used a slang of deprecation and apology 
for having come to such a queer resort as Quebec, 
and raised her brows when Mr. Arbuton reluctantly 
owned how long be had been there. 

u Ah, ah ! ’ she said briskly, bringing the group 


ORDEAL. 


255 


to a stand-still while she spoke, “ one doesn’t stay 
in a slow Canadian city a whole month for love of 
the place. Come, Mr. Arbuton, is she English or 
French? ” 

Kitty’s heart beat thickly, and she whispered 
to herself, “Oh, now! — now surely he must do 
something.” 

“ Or perhaps,” continued his tormentor, “ she’s 
some fair fellow-wanderer in these Canadian wilds, 
— some pretty companion of voyage.” 

Mr. Arbuton gave a kind of start at this, like 
one thrilled for an instant with a sublime impulse. 
He cast a quick, stealthy look at Kitty, and then 
as suddenly withdrew his glance. What had hap- 
pened to her who was usually dressed so prettily ? 
Alas! true to her resolution, Kitty had again re- 
fused Fanny’s dresses that morning, and had faith- 
fully put on her own travelling-suit, — the suit 
which Rachel had made her, and which had seemed 
so very well at Eriecreek that they had called 
Uncle Jack in to admire it when it was tried on. 
Now she knew that it looked countrified, and its 
unstylishness struck in upon her, and made her feel 
countrified in soul. “Yes,” she owned, as she met 
Mr. Arbuton’s glance, “ I’m nothing but an awk- 
ward milkmaid beside that young lady.” This was 
unjust to herself; but truly it was never in her 
present figure that he had intended to show her to 
his world, which he had been sincere enough in 
contemning for her sake while away from it. Con- 


256 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


fronted with good society in these ladies, its dele- 
gates, he doubtless felt, as never before, the vastness 
of his self-sacrifice, the difficulty of his enterprise, 
and it would not have been so stratige if just then 
she should have appeared to him through the hard 
cold vision of the best people instead of that which 
love had illumined. She saw whatever purpose 
towards herself was in his eyes, flicker and die out 
as they fell from hers. Then she sat alone while 
they three walked up and down, up and down, and 
the skirts of the ladies brushed her garments in 
passing. 

“ Oh, where can Dick and Fanny be ? ” she 
silently bemoaned herself, “ and why don’t they 
come and save me from these dreadful people ? ” 

She sat in a stony quiet while they talked on, 
she thought, forever. Their voices sounded in her 
ears like voices heard in a dream, their laughter 
had a nightmare cruelty. Yet she was resolved to 
be just to Mr. Arbuton, she was determined not 
meanly to condemn him ; she confessed to herself, 
with a glimmer of her wonted humor, that her 
dress must be an ordeal of peculiar anguish to him, 
and she half blamed herself for her conscientious- 
ness in wearing it. If she had conceived of any 
such chance as this, she would perhaps, she thought, 
have worn Fanny’s grenadine. 

She glanced again at the group which was now 
receding from her. “ Ah ! ” the elder of the ladies 
said, again halting the others midway of the piazza’? 


ORDEAL. 


257 


length, “ there’s the carriage at last ! But what is 
that stupid animal stopping for ? Oh, I suppose he 
didn't understand, and expects to take us up at tho 
bridge ! Provoking ! But it’s no use ; we may as 
well go to him at once ; it’s plain he isn’t coming 
to us. Mr. Arbuton, will you see us on board ? ” 

“Who — I? Yes, certainly,” he answered ab- 
sently, and for the second time he cast a furtive 
look at Kitty, who had half started to her feet in 
expectation of his coming to her before he went, 
— a look of appeal, or deprecation, or reassurance, 
a3 she chose to interpret it, but after all a look 
only. 

She sank back in blank rejection of his look, and 
so remained motionless as he led the way from the 
porch with a quick and anxious step. Since those 
people came he had not openly recognized her pres- 
ence, and now he had left her without a word. 
She could not believe what she could not but divine, 
and she was powerless to stir as the three moved 
down the road towards the carriage. Then she felt 
the tears spring to her eyes ; she flung down her 
veil, and, swept on by a storm of grief and pride 
and pain, she hurried, ran, towards the grounds 
about the falls. She thrust aside the boy who took 
money at the gate. “ I have no money,” she said 
fiercely; “ I’m going to look for my friends ; they’re 
in here.” 

But Dick and Fanny were not to be seen. In- 
stead, as she fluttered wildly about in search of 
17 


258 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


them, she beheld Mr. Arbuton, who had missed her 
on his return to the inn, coming with a frightened 
face i ) look for her. She had hoped somehow 
neve: to see him again in the world ; but since it 
was to be, she stood still and waited his approach 
in a strange composure ; while he drew nearer, 
thinking how yesterday he had silenced her pro- 
phetic doubt of him : 44 1 have one answer to all 
this ; I love you.” Her faltering words, verified so 
fatally soon, recalled themselves to him with intol- 
erable accusation. And what should he say now ? 
If possibly, — if by some miracle, — she might not 
have seen what he feared she must ! One glance 
that he dared give her taught him better ; and 
while she waited for him to speak, he could not lure 
any of the phrases, of which the air seemed full, to 
serve him. 

44 1 wonder you came back to me,” she said after 
an eternal moment. 

44 Came back ? ” he echoed, vacantly. 

44 You seemed to have forgotten my existence ! ” 

Of course the whole wrong, if any wrong had 
been done to her, was tacit, and much might be 
said to prove that she felt needlessly aggrieved, 
and that he could not have acted otherwise than 
as he did ; she herself had owned that it must be 
an embarrassing position to him. 

44 Why, what have I done,” he began, 44 what 
makes you think .... For heaven’s sake listen to 
me ! ” he cried ; and then, while she turned a mute 


ORDEAL. 


259 


attentive face to him, he stood silent as before, like 
one who has lost his thought, and strives to recall 
what he was going to say. “ What sense, — what 
use,” he resumed at last, as if continuing the course 
of some previous argument, “ would there have 
been in making a display of our acquaintance be- 
fore them? I did not suppose at first that they 
saw us together.” .... But here he broke off, 
and, indeed, his explanation had but a mean effect 
when put into words. “ I did not expect them to 
stay. I thought they would go away every mo- 
ment ; and then at last it was too late to manage 
the affair without seeming to force it.” This was 
better ; and he paused again, for some sign of ac- 
quiescence from Kitty, and caught her eye fixed on 
his face in what seemed contemptuous wonder. His 
own eyes fell, and ran uneasily over her dress before 
he lifted them and began once more, as if freshly 
inspired : “I could have wished you to be known 
to my friends with every advantage on your side,” 
and this had such a magnanimous sound that he 
took courage ; “ and you ought to have had faith 
enough in me to believe that I never could have 
meant you a slight. If you had known more of 
the world, — if your social experience had been 
greater, you would have seen . . . . Oh ! ” he 
cried, desperately, “is there nothing you have to 
say to me ? ” 

“No,” said Kitty, simply, but with a languid 
quiet, and shrinking from speech as from an added 


260 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


pang. “ You have been telling me that you were 
ashamed of me in this dress before those people. 
But I knew that already. What do you want me 
to do?” 

“ If you give me time, I can make everything 
clear to you.” 

“ But now you don’t deny it.” 

“ Deny what ? I ” — 

But here the whole fabric of Mr. Arbuton’s de- 
fense toppled to the ground. He was a man of 
scrupulous truth, not accustomed to deceive himself 
or others. He had been ashamed of her, he could 
not deny it, not to keep the love that was now 
dearer to him than life. He saw it with paralyzing 
clearness; and, as an inexorable fact that con- 
founded quite as much as it dismayed him, he per- 
ceived that throughout that ignoble scene she had 
been the gentle person and he the vulgar one. 
How could it have happened with a man like him I 
As he looked back upon it, he seemed to have been 
only the helpless sport of a sinister chance. 

But now he must act ; it could not go so, it was 
too horrible a thing to let stand confessed. A hun- 
dred protests thronged to his lips, but he refused 
utterance to them all as worse even than silence ; 
and so, still meaning to speak, he could not speak. 
He could only stand and wait while it wrung his 
heart to see her trembling, grieving lips. 

His own aspect was so lamentable, that she ha^ 
pitied him, half respected him for his truth’s sake 


ORDEAL. 


261 


“You were right; I think it won’t be necessary 
for me to go to Boston,” she said with a dim smile. 
“ Good-by. It’s all been a dreadful, dreadful mis- 
take.” 

It was like him, even in that humiliation, not to 
have thought of losing her, not to have dreamed 
but that he could somehow repair his error, and she 
would yet willingly be his. “ Oh, no, no, no,” he 
cried, starting forward, “ don’t say that ! It can’t 
be, it mustn’t be ! You are angry now, but I 
know you’ll see it differently. Don’t be so quick 
with me, with yourself. I will do anything, say 
anything, you like.” 

The tears stood in her eyes ; but they were cruel 
drops. “You can’t say anything that wouldn’t 
make it worse. You can’t undo what’s been done, 
and that’s only a little part of what couldn’t be 
undone. The best way is for us to part ; it’s the 
only way.” 

“ No, there are all the ways in the world besides ! 
Wait — think ! — I implore you not to be so — pre- 
cipitate.” 

The unfortunate word incensed her the more ; 
it intimated that she was ignorantly throwing too 
much away. “ I am not rash now, but I was very 
rash half an hour ago. I shall not change my 
mind again. Oh,” she cried, giving way, “ it isn’t 
what you’ve done, but what you are and what 1 
am, that’s the great trouble! I could easily for- 
give what’s happened, — if you asked it; but I 


262 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


couldn’t alter both our whole lives, or make myseli 
over again, and you couldn’t change yourself. Per- 
haps you would try, and I know that I would, but 
it would be a wretched failure and disappointment 
as long as we lived. I’ve learnt a great deal since 
I first saw those people.” And in truth he felt as 
if the young girl whom he had been meaning to lift 
to a higher level than her own at his side had some- 
how suddenly grown beyond him ; and his heart 
sank. “ It’s foolish to try to argue such a thing, 
but it’s true ; and you must let me go.” 

“ I can't let you go,” he said, in such a way that 
she longed at least to part kindly with him. 

“ You can make it hard for me,” she answered, 
“ but the end will be the same.” 

“ I won’t make it hard for you, then,” he re- 
turned, after a pause, in which he grew paler, and 
she stood with a wan face plucking the red leaves 
from a low bough that stretched itself towards her. 

He turned and walked away some steps ; then he 
came suddenly back. “ I wish to express my re- 
gret,” he began formally, and with his old air of 
doing what was required of him as a gentleman, 
“ that I should have unintentionally done anything 
to wound ” — 

“ Oh, better not speak of that” interrupted Kitty 
with bitterness, “ it’s all over now.” And the 
final tinge of superiority in his manner made her 
give him a little stab of dismissal. “ Good-by. J 
see my cousins coming.” 














































She stood and watched him walk away. — Page 263 





ORDEAL. 


268 


She stood and watched him walk away, the sun« 
light playing on his figure through the mantling 
leaves, till he passed out of the grove. 

The cataract roared with a seven-fold tumult in 
her ears, and danced before her eyes. All things 
swam together, as in her blurred sight her cousins 
came wavering towards her. 

“ Where is Mr. Arbuton? ” asked Mrs. Ellison. 

Kitty threw her arms about the neck of .hat 
foolish woman, whose loving heart she could not 
doubt, and clung sobbing to her. “ Gone,” she 
said; and Mrs. Ellison, wise for once, asked no 
more. 

She had the whole story that evening, without 
asking ; and whilst she raged, she approved of 
Kitty, and covered her with praises and condo- 
lences. 

“ Why, of course, Fanny, I didn’t care for know- 
ing those people. What should I want to know 
them for ? But what hurt me was that he should 
so postpone me to them, and ignore me before them, 
and leave me without a word, then, when I ought 
to have been everything in the world to him and 
first of all. I believe things came to me while I 
sat there, as they do to drowning people, all at 
once, and I saw the whole affair more distinctly 
than ever I did. We were too far apart in what 
we had been and what we believed in and respected, 
ever to grow really together. And if he gave me 
the highest position in the world, I should have 


• 264 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


only tliat. He never could like the people who had 
been good to me, and whom I loved so dearly, and 
he only could like me as far as he could estrange 
me from them. If he could coolly put me aside 
now , how would it be afterwards with the rest, and 
with me too ? That’s what flashed through me, 
and I don’t believe that getting splendidly married 
is as good as being true to the love that came long 
before, and honestly living your own life out, with- 
out fear or trembling, whatever it is. So perhaps,’’ 
said Kitty, with a fresh burst of tears, “ you needn’t 
condole with me so much, Fanny. Perhaps if you 
had seen him, you would have thought he was the 
one to be pitied. I pitied him, though he was so 
cruel. When he first turned to meet them, you’d 
have thought he was a man sentenced to death, or 
under some dreadful spell or other ; and while he 
was walking up and down listening to that horrible 
comical old woman, — the young lady didn’t talk 
much, — and trying to make straight answers to 
her, and to look as if I didn’t exist, it was the most 
ridiculous thing in the world.” 

“ How queer you are, Kitty ! ” 

“ Yes ; but you needn’t think I didn’t feel it. I 
seemed to be like two persons sitting there, one in 
agony, and one just coolly watching it. But oh,” 
she broke out again while Fanny held her closer in 
her arms, “ how could fie have done it, how could 
he have acted so towards me ; and just after I had 
begun to think him so generous and noble ! It 


ORDEAL. 


265 


seems too dreadful to be true.” And with this 
Kitty kissed her cousin and they had a little cry to- 
gether over the trust so done to death ; and Kitty 
dried her eyes, and bade Fanny a brave good night, 
and went off to weep again, upon her pillow. 

But before that, she called Fanny to her door, 
and with a smile breaking through the trouble of 
her face, she asked, “ How do you suppose he got 
back ? I never thought of it before.” 

“ Oh ! ” cried Mrs. Ellison with profound disgust, 
“I hope he had to walk back. But I’m afraid 
there were only too many chances for him to ride. 
I dare say he could get a calash at the hotel 
there.” 

Kitty had not spoken a word of reproach to 
Fanny for her part in promoting this hapless 
affair ; and when the latter, returning to her own 
*">om, found the colonel there, she told him the 
wory, and then began to discern that she was not 
without credit for Kitty’s fortunate escape, as she 
called it. 

“ Yes,” said the colonel, “ under exactly similar 
circumstances she’ll know just what to expect an- 
other time, if that’s any comfort.” 

“ It’s a great comfort,” retorted Mrs. Ellison ; 
“ you can’t find out what the world is, too soon, I 
can tell you ; and if I hadn’t manoeuvred a little to 
bring them together, Kitty might have gone off 
with some lingering fancy for him ; and think what 
a misfortune that would have been ! ” 


266 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


“ Horrible.” 

“ And now, she’ll not have a single regret for 
him.” 

“ I should think not,” said the colonel ; and he 
spoke in a tone of such dejection, that it went to 
his wife’s heart more than any reproach of Kitty’s 
could have done. “ You’re all right, and nobody 
blames you, Fanny ; but if you think it’s well for 
such a girl as Kitty to find out that a man who 
has had the best that the world can give, and has 
really some fine qualities of his own, can be such a 
poor devil, after all, then I don’t. She may be the 
wiser for it, but you know she won’t be the hap- 
pier.” 

“ Oh don't, Dick, don’t speak seriously ! It’s so 
dreadful from you . If you feel so about it, why 
don’t you do something ? ” 

“ Oh yes, there’s a fine opening. We know, be- 
cause we know ever so much more, how the case 
really is ; but the way it seems to stand is, that 
Kitty couldn’t bear to have him show civility to his 
friends, and ran away, and then wouldn’t give him 
a chance to explain. Besides, what could I do un- 
der any circumstances ? ” 

“ Well, Dick, of course you’re right, and I wish 
I could see things as clearly as you do. But I really 
believe Kitty’s glad to be out of it.” 

“ What ? ” thundered the colonel. 

“ I think Kitty’s secretly relieved to have it all 
over. But you needn’t stun me.” 


ORDEAL. 


267 


“You do?” The colonel paused as if to gain 
force enough for a reply. But after waiting, noth- 
ing whatever came to him, and he wound up his 
watch. 

“ To be sure,” added Mrs. Ellison thoughtfully, 
after a pause, “ she’s giving up a great deal ; and 
she’ll probably never have such another chance as 
long as she lives.” 

“ I hope she won’t,” said the colonel. 

“ Oh, you needn’t pretend that a high position 
and the social advantages he could have given her 
are to be despised.” 

“No, you heartless worldling; and neither are 
peace of mind, and self-respect, and whole feelings, 
and your little joke.” 

“ Oh, you — you sickly sentimentalist ! ” 

“That’s what they used to call us in the good 
old abolition days,” laughed the colonel ; and the 
two being quite alone, they made their peace with 
a kiss, and were as happy for the moment as if 
they had thereby assuaged Kitty’s grief and morti- 
fication. 

“ Besides, Fanny,” continued the colonel, “ though 
I’m not much on religion, I believe these things are 
ordered.” 

“ Don’t be blasphemous, Colonel Ellison ! ” cried 
his wife, who represented the church if not religion 
in her family. “ As if Providence had anything to 
do with love-affairs ! ” 

“ Well, I won’t ; but I will say that if Kitty 


268 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. * 


turned her back on Mr. Arbuton and the social ad- 
vantages he could offer her, it’s a sign she wasn’t 
fit for them. And, poor thing, if she doesn’t know 
how much she’s lost, why she has the less to grieve 
over. If she thinks she couldn’t be happy with a 
husband who would keep her snubbed and fright- 
ened after he lifted her from her lowly sphere, and 
would tremble whenever she met any of his own 
sort, of course it may be a sad mistake, but it can’t 
be helped. She must go back to Eriecreek, and 
try to worry along without him. Perhaps she’ll 
work out her destiny some other way.” 


XIV. 


afterwards. 



Mrs. Ellison 
had Kitty’s whole 
story, and so has 
the reader, but for 
a little thing that 
happened next 
day, and which is 
perhaps scarcely 
worthy of being 
set down. 

Mr. Arbuton’s 
valise was sent for 
at night from the 
Hotel St. Louis, 
and they did not 
see him again. 

When Kitty woke next morning, a fine cold rain was 
falling upon the drooping hollyhocks in the Ursu- 
lines’ Garden, which seemed stricken through every 
leaf and flower with sudden autumn. All the fore' 
noon the garden-paths remained empty, but under 
the porch by the poplars sat the slender nun and the 
stout nun side by side, and held each other’s hands. 
They did not move, they did not appear to speak. 


270 


A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE. 


The fine cold rain was still falling as Kitty and 
Fanny drove down Mountain Street towards the 
Railway Station, whither Dick and the baggage 
had preceded them, for they were going away from 
Quebec. Midway, their carriage was stopped by a 
mass of ascending vehicles, and their driver drew 
rein till the press was over. At the same time 
Kitty saw advancing up the sidewalk a figure gro- 
tesquely resembling Mr. Arbuton. It was he, but 
shorter, and smaller, and meaner. Then it was not 
he, but only a light overcoat like his covering a 
very common little man about whom it hung 
loosely, — a burlesque of Mr. Arbuton’s self -re- 
spectful overcoat, or the garment itself in a state of 
miserable yet comical collapse. 

“ What is that ridiculous little wretch staring at 
you for, Kitty ? ” asked Fanny. 

“ I don’t know,” answered Kitty, absently. 

The man was now smiling and gesturing vio- 
lently. Kitty remembered having seen him before, 
and then recognized the cooper who had released 
Mr. Arbuton from the dog in the Sault au Mate- 
lot, and to whom he had given his lacerated over- 
coat. 

The little creature awkwardly unbuttoned the 
garment, and took from the breast-pocket a few let- 
ters, which he handed to Kitty, talking eagerly in 
French all the time. 

“ What is he doing, Kitty ? ” 

“ What is he saying, Fanny ? ” 

“ Something about a ferocious dog that was going 


AFTERWARDS. 


271 


to spring upon you, and the young gentleman being 
brave as a lion and rushing forward, and saving 
your life.” Mrs. Ellison was not a woman to let 
her translation lack color, even though the original 
wanted it. 

“ Make him tell it again.” 

When the man had done so, “ Yes,” sighed Kitty, 
“ it all happened that day of the Montgomery ex- 
pedition ; but I never knew, before, of what he had 
done for me. Fanny,” she cried, with a great sob, 
“ maybe I’m the one who has been cruel ? But 
what happened yesterday makes his having saved 
my life seem such a very little matter.” 

“ Nothing at all ! ” answered Fanny, “ less than 
nothing ! ” But her heart failed her. 

The little cooper had bowed himself away, and 
was climbing the hill, Mr. Arbuton’s coat-skirts 
striking his heels as he walked. 

“ What letters are those ? ” asked Fanny. 

“ Oh, old letters to Mr. Arbuton, which he found 
in the pocket. I suppose he thought I would give 
them to him.” 

“ But how are you going to do it ? ” 

“ I ought to send them to him,” answered Kitty. 
Then, after a silence that lasted till they reached 
the boat, she handed the letters to Fanny. “ Dick 
may send them,” she said. 


THE END. 














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In the Carquinez Woods. “Little Classic” style. 

i8mo 1. 00 

On the Frontier. “ Little Classic ” style. i8mo . . 1.00 

By Shore and Sedge. “ Little Classic style.” i8mo. 1.00 

Maruja. A Novel. “ Little Classic ” Style. i8mo. 1.00 


Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

Works. New Riverside Edition . With an original 
etching in each volume, and a new Portrait. With 
bibliographical notes by George P. Lathrop. Com- 
plete in twelve volumes, crown 8vo. 

Twice-Told Tales. 

Mosses from an Old Manse. 

The House of the Seven Gables, and the Snow-Image. 

The Wonder-Book, Tanglewood Tales, and Grand- 
father’s Chair. 

The Scarlet Letter, and The Blithedale Romance. 

The Marble Faun. 

Our Old Home, and English Note-Books. 2 vols. 

American Note-Books. 

French and Italian Note Books. 


7 


Houghton , Mifflin and Company 

The Dolliver Romance, Fanshawe, Septimius Felton, 
and, in an Appendix, the Ancestral Footstep. 

Tales, Sketches, and Other Papers. With Biograph- 
ical Sketch by G. P. Lathrop, and Indexes. 

Each volume $2.00 

The set 24.00 

Half calf . . . £48.00 Half crushed levant 60.00 

“ Little Classic ” Edition. Each volume contains a 
new Vignette Illustration. In twenty-five volumes, 
i8mo. 

Each volume 1.00 

The set 25.00 

Half calf, or half morocco £62.50 Tree calf . 81.00 
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys. Holiday Edi- 
tion. With Illustrations by F. S. Church. 4to . . 2.50 
Twice-Told Tales. School Edition. i8mo .... 1.00 

The Scarlet Letter. Holiday Edition. Illustrated by 
Mary Hallock Foote. Red-line border. 8vo, full 

gilt 4.00 

Half calf 6.00 

Morocco, or tree calf 9.00 

Popular Edition, icmo 1.00 

True Stories from History and Biography. i2mo . 1.50 

The Wonder-Book. i2mo 1.50 

Tanglewood Tales. i2mo 1.50 

Tales of the White Hills, and Legends of New Eng- 
land. 32mo 75 

I.egends of Province House, and A Virtuoso's Col- 
lection. 32mo 75 

High Lights. A Novel. i6mo 1.25 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Elsie Venner. A Romance of Destiny. Crown 8vo . 2 00 

The Guardian Angel. Crown 8vo 2.00 

The Story of Iris. 32mo 75 

My Hunt after the Captain. 32010 40 

A Mortal Antipathy. Crown 8vo 2.00 

Blanche Willis Howard. 

One Summer. A Novel. “Little Classic” style. 1.25 
Holiday Edition. Illustrated by Hoppin. Sq. i2mo 2.50 

Augustus Hoppin. 

Recollections of Auton House. Illustrated. Small 

4 to 1-25 

A Fashionable Sufferer. Illustrated. i2mo ... t.50 

Two Compton Boys. Illustrated. Square i6mo . . 1.50 


8 Works of Fiction Published by 


William Dean Howells. 

Their Wedding Journey. Illustrated. i2mo . . . $1.50 

The Same. Illustrated. Paper covers. i6mo . . .50 

The Same. “ Little Classic ” style. i8mo .... 1.25 

A Chance Acquaintance. Illustrated. i2mo . . . 1.50 

The Same. Illustrated. Paper covers. i6mo . . .50 

The Same. “ Little Classic ’ style. i8mo .... 1.25 

A Foregone Conclusion. i2mo 1.50 

The Lady of the Aroostook. i2mo 1.50 

The Undiscovered Country. i2mo 1.50 

A Day’s Pleasure, etc. 32mo 75 


Thomas Hughes. 

Tom Brown’s School-Days at Rugby. Illustrated 


Edition. i6mo i.co 

Tom Brown at Oxford. i6mo 1.25 

Henry James, Jr. 

A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. i2mo. . . 2.00 

Roderick Hudson. i2mo . . 2.co 

The American. i2mo 2.00 

Watch and Ward. “ Little Classic ” style. i8mo . f.25 

The Europeans. i2mo 1.50 

Confidence. i2tno 1.50 

The Portrait of a Lady. i2mo 2.00 

Anna Jameson. 

Studies and Stories. “ Little Classic ” style. i8mo . 1.50 

Diary of an Ennuyee. “ Little Classic ” style. i8mo . 1.50 

Douglas Jerrold. 

Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures. Illustrated. “River- 
side Classics.” i6mo 1.00 


Sarah Orne Jewett. 

Deephaven. i6mo 

Old Friends and New. i8mo 
Country By-Ways. i8mo . . . 

The Mate of the Daylight. i8mo 
A Country Doctor. i6mo . . . 

A Marsh Island. i6mo . . . . 


Rossiter Johnson. 

“ Little Classics.” Each in one volume. i8mo. 


I. Exile. 

II. Intellect. 

III. Tragedy. 


IV. Life. 

V. Laughter. 

VI. Love. 


1.25 

1.25 

1.25 

1.25 

1.25 

1.25 


9 


Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 


VII. Romance. XIII. Narrative Poems. 

VIII. Mystery. XIV. Lyrical Poems. 

IX. Comedy. XV. Minor Poems. 

X. Childhood. XVI. Nature. 

XI. Heroism. XVII. Humanity. 

XII. Fortune. XVIII. Authors. 

Each volume 

The set 

Half calf, or half morocco 

The Same. In nine volumes, square i6mo. 

The set 

Half calf 

Tree calf . . 

(Sold only in sets.) 


$1.00 

18.00 

45.00 

27.00 
40.50 


Charles and Mary Lamb. 

Tales from Shakespeare. i8mo 1.00 

The Same. Illustrated. i6mo 1.00 

The Same. Handy-Volume Edition. 321110, gilt top . 1.25 


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

Hyperion. A Romance. i6mo 1.50 

Popular Edition. i6mo 40 

Popular Edition. Paper covers, i6mo 15 

Outre-Mer. i6mo 1.50 

Popular Edition. i6mo' 40 

Popular Edition. Paper covers, i6mo 15 

Kavanagh. i6mo 1.50 


S. Weir Mitchell. 

In War Time. i6mo 1.25 

Nora Perry. 

The Tragedy of the Unexpected, and Other Stories. 

“ Little Classic ” style. i8mo 1.25 

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 

The Gates Ajar. i6mo 1.50 

Beyond the Gates. i6mo 1.25 

Men, Women, and Ghosts. i6mo 1.5a 

Hedged In. i6mo 1.50 

The Silent Partner. i6mo 1.50 

The Story of Avis. i6mo 1.50 

Sealed Orders, and Other Stories. i6mo 1.50 

Friends : A Duet. i6mo 1.25 

Doctor Zay. i6mo 1.25 

An Old Maid’s Paradise. i6mo 50 

Marian C. L. Reeves and Emily Read. 

Pilot Fortune. i6mo 1.25 


10 Works of Fiction Published by 


Riverside Paper Series. 

A Series of Novels by the best American Authors. 

1. But Yet a Woman. By A. S. Hardy. 

2. Missy. By the author of “ Rutledge.” 

3. The Stillwater Tragedy. By T. B. Aldrich. 

4. Elsie Venner. By O. W. Holmes. 

5. An Earnest Trifler. By Mary A. Sprague. 

6. The Lamplighter. By Maria S. Cummins. 

7. Their Wedding Journey. By W. D. Howells. 

8. Married for Fun. Anonymous. 

9. An Old Maid’s Paradise. By Elizabeth Stuart 

Phelps. 

10. The House of a Merchant Prince. By W. H. 

Bishop. 

11. An Ambitious Woman. By Edgar Fawcett. 

12. Marjorie’s Quest. By Jeanie T. Gould (Mrs. 

Lincoln). 

13. Hammersmith. By Mark Sibley Severance. 

Each volume, i6mo, paper covers 

Joseph Xavier Boniface Saintine. 

Picciola. “ Riverside Classics.” Illustrated. i6mo . 


Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. 

Paul and Virginia. “ Riverside Classics.” Illustrated. 
i6mo 

The Same, together with Undine, and Sintram. 32mo 

Sir Walter Scott. 

The Waverley Novels. Illustrated Library Edition. 
This edition has been carefully edited, and is illus- 
trated with 100 engravings by Darley, Dielman, 
Fredericks, Low, Share, Sheppard, and has also a 
glossary and a very full index of characters. In 25 
volumes, i2mo. 


Waverley. 

Guy Mannering. 

The Antiquary. 

Rob Roy. 

Old Mortality. 

Black Dwarf, and Legerd 
of Montrose. 

Heart of Mid-Lothian. 
Bride of Lammermoor. 
Ivanhoe 
The Monastery. 

The Abbot. 

Kenilworth. 


The Pirate. 

The Fortunes of Nigel. 
Peveril of the Peak. 
Quentin Durward. 

St. Ronan’s Well. 
Redgauntlet. 

The Betrothed, and the 
Highland Widow. 

The Talisman, and Other 
Tales. 

Woodstock. 

The Fair Maid of Perth. 
Anne of Geierstein. 


$ .50 
1. 00 

1. 00 
■75 


II 


Houghton , Mifflin and Company. 


Count Robert of Paris. The Surgeon’s Daughter, 

and Castle Dangerous. 

Each volume $1.00 

The set 25-00 

Half calf 62.50 

Half seal 75.00 

Globe Edition. Complete in 13 volumes. With 100 
Illustrations. i6mo. 

The set 16.25 

Half calf, or half morocco 35.00 

(Sold only in sets. ) 

Tales of a Grandfather. Illustrated Library Edition. 

With six steel plates. In three volumes, i2mo . . 4.50 

Half calf 900 

Ivanhoe. Fancy binding. 8vo .... ... 1. 00 

Half calf 2.50 

Horace E. Scudder. 

The Dwellers in Five-Sisters’ Court. i6mo .... 1.25 

Stories and Romances. i6mo 1.25 

Mark Sibley Severance. 

Hammersmith : His Harvard Days. i2mo .... 1.50 

T. D. Sherwood. 


Comic History of the United States. Illustrated. i2mo 2.50 

J. E. Smith. 

Oakridge : An Old-Time Story of Maine. i2mo . . 2.00 

Mary A. Sprague. 

An Earnest Trifler. i6mo 1.25 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

Agnes of Sorrento. i2mo 1.50 

The Pearl of Orr’s Island. i2mo 1.5c 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Popular Illustrated Edition. 

i2mo 2.00 

The Same. Popular Edition. i2mo 1.00 

The Minister’s Wooing. i2mo 1.50 

The Mayflower, and Other Sketches. i2mo . . . 1.50 

Dred. i2mo 1.50 

Oldtown Folks. i2mo 1.50 

Sam Lawson’s Fireside Stories. Illustrated. JVezu 

Edition , enlarged 1.50 

My Wife and I. Illustrated. i2mo 1.50 

We and Our Neighbors. Illustrated. i2mo . . . 1.50 

Poganuc People. Illustrated. i2mo 1.50 

The above eleven volumes, in box 16.50 


12 


Works of Fiction. 


Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Holiday Edition. With red line 


border, Introduction, and a Bibliography by George 
Bullen, of the British Museum. Over ioo Illustra- 
tions. i2mo $3- 50 

Half calf 6.00 

Morocco, or tree calf 7.50 

Popular Edition. i2mo 1.00 

A Dog’s Mission, etc. Illustrated. Small 4to . . . 1.25 

Queer Little People. Illustrated. Small 4to . . . 1.25 

Little Pussy Willow. Illustrated. Small 4to . . . 1.25 

Gen. Lew Wallace. 

The Fair God ; or, The Last of the ’Tzins. i2mo . T.50 

Henry Watterson. 

Oddities in Southern Life and Character. Illustrated. 

i6mo 1.50 

Richard Grant White. 

The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys, together with the 
Episode of Mr. Washington Adams in England. 
i6mo 1.25 


Adeline D. T. Whitney. 

Faith Gartney’s Girlhood. Illustrated. i2mo . 
Hitherto: A Story of Yesterdays. i2mo . . 

Patience Strong’s Outings. i2mo 

The Gayworthys. izmo 

Leslie Goldthwaite. Illustrated, izmo . . . 

We Girls : A Home Story. Illustrated. i2mo 

Real Folks. Illustrated. i2mo 

The Other Girls. Illustrated. i2mo . . . . 

Sights and Insights. 2 vols. i2mo 

Odd, or Even ? i2mo 

Boys at Chequasset. Illustrated, izmo . . . 

Bonnyborough. 

The above twelve volumes in box .... 


. . 1.50 

. . 1.50 

. . 1.50 

. . 1.50 

. . 1.50 

• • 1.50 

• • 150 

• • 150 

. . 3.00 
. . 1.50 

. . 1.50 

. . 18.00 


*** For sale by all Booksellers. Sent , post-paid , on receipt of price ( in 
check on Boston or New York , money-order , or registered letter ) by the 
Publishers, 


HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 

4 Park St., Boston, Mass.; ii East Seventeenth St., 
New York. 

A Catalogue containing portraits of many of the above authors , 
with a description of their works , will be sent free, on application , 
to any address. 

I*' 714 ** 












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